JUDAISM 


ON  THE 


SOCIAL  QUESTION. 


BY 

KABBI  H.  BEEKOWITZ. 


NEW  YORK : 
JOHN  B.  ALDEN,  PUBLISHER. 

1888. 


Copyright,  1888, 

BY 

THE  PROVIDENT  BOOK  COMPANY. 

^    i\ 


GRATEFULLY  INSCRIBED 

TO  THE 

REV.  L.  NAUMBURG,  of  ALLKGEANY  CITY,  PA.,  and 

REV.  DR.  L.  MAYER,  of  PITTSBURGH,  PA. 

The  teachers  and  friends  who  first  opened  to  me  the  portal 

of  Jewish  learning  and,  by  their  encouragement  and 

instruction,  directed  the  course  of  my  life. 


442342 


CONTENTS. 


Discourse  I.  The  Subject  Defined 7 

*  •        II.  Sources  of  the  Social  Difficulty 15 

44       in.  Have  the  Poor  Grown  Poorer? 24 

44      IV.  The  subject  Continued 34 

"  V.  How  Did  Moses  Solve  the  Social  Problem?. . .  44 

44       VI.  The  Social  Chaos  of  the  Dark  Ages 55 

44      VII.  The  Rise  of  the  Modern  Free  Laborer 64 

44    VIII.  The  subject  Continued 74 

44       IX.  The  Complaint  of  the  Modern  Laborer, 82 

44         X.  Violence  the  Proposed  Solution 90 

"       XI.  Socialism 101 

44    ,  XII.  The  subject  Continued .  .110 

44    XUI.  Constructive  Solutions.    ResumS 119 


DISCOURSE  I. 

THE  SUBJECT  DEFINED. 

THE  true  social  question  is  the  question 
of  social  Justice.  It  is  preeminently  the 
question  of  the  day.  It  has  been  the  ques- 
tion of  all  ages.  From  the  dawn  of  civiliza- 
tion until  now,  long  past  the  high  noon  of 
this  nineteenth  century  the  social  question 
has  vexed  and  baffled  the  champions  of 
peace.  Its  history  is  the  history  of  the  social 
organism  as  constituted  of  Family,  Tribe, 
Community  arid  State.  The  question  was 
raised  when  society  began.  It  has  never 
been  completely  solved.  "  Never  does  huma- 
nity rest ;  one  experiment  immediately  suc- 
ceeds another  ;  we  advance  through  revolu- 
tions of  unknown  destinies."  As  each  judge 
decides  in  succession  the  cases  that  are 
brought  before  him,  so  each  epoch  decides 
tKe  questions  of  just  relationship  and  equi- 
table adaptation  of  circumstance  in  the  whole 
range  of  the  complex  social  world  as  they  are 
presented  in  their  changing  phases.  This  is 
a  question  as  broad  as  the  world,  as  deep  as 
the  heart  of  humanity. 

The  special  problem  of  our  age  is  but  the 
outcome  of  this  world's  problem  of  all  ages. 
It  is  the  latest  phase  and  the  most  moment- 
ous. It  differs  from  all  that  preceded,  for 
the  world  has  changed  its  aspects.  Eman- 
cipation has  wrought  miracles,  not  only  in 
the  condition  but  in  the  aspiration,  thought 


/8       ,  The  Social  Question. 

r.i  1  endeavors  of  man.  The  barrier  of  caste 
'ig  overleaped—  -peasants  mount  to  the  throne. 
Education  has  brought  out  the  faculties 
of  the  mind  from  torpidity  with  as  won- 
derful a  metamorphosis  as  that  of  the  but- 
terfly from  the  grub.  Science  has  silently 
revolutionized  all  the  previous  modes  of  so- 
cial life.  The  steam-ship  has  long  since  vir- 
tually run  the  sailing  vessel  into  the  shoals 
of  oblivion,  as  the  railroad-train  has  outdis- 
tanced the  stage-coach,  the  reaping-machine 
vanquished  the  scythe,  the  thresher  supplant- 
ed the  flail.  The  steam-hammer  has  grown 
to  be  the  megatherium  of  industry,  and  the 
hundred-handed,  myriad-fingered  machines 
of  every  description  are  indeed  created  in 
the  image  of  man's  powers.  Change  and 
transition  are  everywhere,  and  in  everything, 
and  the  task  of  intellect  and  the  trust  of  vir- 
tue lies  in  securing  the  best  results  by  the 
best  methods.  No  age  in  history  vibrates  as 
does  this  in  which  we  live.  All  this  change 
and  all  this  transition  has  made  a  new  social 
question.  At  present  it  is  the  strongest  and 
in  tensest  phase  in  the  universal  agitation 
that  reaches  the  altar  and  shakes  the  throne. 
The  air  is  filled  with  Utopian  and  revolu- 
tionary ideas  never  dreamed  of  before.  There 
is  a  dread  disease  spreading  with  the  fatal 
swiftness  of  contagion.  Discontent  it  is 
called.  It  fills  the  hearts  of  men  with  the 
bitterness  of  despair.  It  breathes  upon  their 
minds  and  leaves  the  taint  of  impurity.  The 
whole  world  is  restive  and  in  dread  of  its 
approach.  All  our  political,  social  and  moral 
institutions  are  threatened  by  it.  Men  rave 
and  rush  wildly  about  under  its  spell.  Riot- 
ing fills  the  streets  of  our  cities.  The  gut- 
ters run  rivers  of  gore.  The  bad  blood  of 
the  races  is  stirred  to  fever  heat.  Women 


The  Subject  Defined.  9 

are  unsexed,  and,  waving  aloft  the  red  flag, 
goad  on  the  mass  to  reckless  desperation,  to 

?'.llage  and  murder  and  arson.  In  New 
ork,  in  San  Francisco,  in  Pittsburgh,  in  St. 
Louis,  in  Chicago,  there  are  broken-hearted 
widows  and  orphans ;  there  are  tombs  of 
martyrs ;  and  charred  ruins  are  pointing 
upward  like  blackened  monuments,  as  if 
they  would  charge  the  very  heavens  with 
remissness.  Trafalgar  Square  in  London  is 
filled  with  a  noisy  multitude.  As  the  mighty 
waves  of  ocean  break  with  ominous  roar 
against  their  rocky  barriers,  so  the  mob 
chafes  with  noisy  impatience  against  the 
might  of  the  militant  powers.  Parliament 
Hall  and  the  hallowed  tombs  of  Westminster 
Abbey  have  not  yet  forgotten  the  plots  of 
dynamite  fiends.  The  aristocracies  of  rank 
and  power  and  wealth  and  birth  are  totter- 
ing to  their  downfall.  There  are  outbursts 
of  anarchy  in  Chicago,  Paris,  Berlin,  Vienna 
and  St.  Petersburg;  the  whole  world  is 
thrilled  by  the  explosion. 

Thousands  of  minds  are  busy  in  thought, 
thousands  of  hearts  .are  throbbing  in  pain, 
thousands  of  throats  are  hoarsely  shouting, 
over  the  revolutionary  war-cry  of  the  day : 
"  The  rich  are  growing  richer,  and  less  nu- 
merous ;  the  poor  are  growing  poorer,  and 
more  numerous." 

Is  this  true  ?  If  so,  why  ?  What  is  the 
remedy  ?  This  is  the  Social  Question  of  to- 
day. It  is  a  question  ablaze  with  the  fire  of 
radicalism.  Its  glare  is  in  our  eyes.  We 
must  "steady"  our  vision  and  not  be  blind- 
ed. We  must  not — we  dare  not — shut  our 
eyes  to  its  light.  This  is  a  question  not  to 
be  ignored,  nor  to  be  brushed  aside  with 
lofty  indifference  or  cool  disdain ;  not  to  be 
sneered  down ;  not  to  be  laughed  down.  It 


10  The  Social  Question. 

is  a  serious  theme.  The  cry  of  alarm  has 
pierced  our  ears ;  its  shrill  tones  have  start- 
led us  out  of  the  slumbers  of  a  fancied  se- 
curity. Hearken,  O  ye  sons  of  men !  By 
the  right  hand  of  the  Eternal  God  sits  Jus- 
tice enthroned.  "  If  the  magistracy  calls 
itself  torture,  if  the  Church  calls  itself  in- 
quisition, then  humanity  looks  them  in  the 
face  and  says  to  the  judge :  I  will  none  of 
thy  law,  and  says  to  the  priest :  I  will  none 
of  thy  dogma.  Then  philosophy  rises  in 
wrath  and  arraigns  the  judge  before  justice 
and  the  priest  before  God." 

Has  religion  naught  to  say,  then,  to  this 
terrible  issue?  The  journals  have  of  late 
been  full  of  the  reports  of  Synods  and  Con- 
ferences of  all  sects  and  denominations. 
There  was  a  spirited  discussion  in  Chicago, 
where  two  of  these  gatherings  of  represent- 
atives of  different  denominations  were  in 
session,  on  such  an  all-important  matter  as 
to  whether  or  not  it  were  allowable  to  ex- 
change greetings  in  certain  phrases ;  but 
not  a  word  on  the  social  difficulty.  Else- 
where there  was  much  hot  shot  and  powder 
expended  on  what  is  called  "  the  Andover 
Controversy,"  as  to  whether  there  is  any 
chance  for  repentance  and  redemption  from 
eternal  tortures  in  the  next  world  for  those 
of  us  who  do  not  believe  in  certain  dogmas : 
but  not  a  word  (that  has  reached  us)  on  the 
burning  Social  Question.  The  dead  and 
barren  discussions  of  theology  bar  out  the 
living  and  fruitful  questions  of  the  day. 
The  people  cry  for  bread,  but  receive  a 
stone.  They  have  been  pushed  into  the 
water,  and  those  who  should  be  their  best 
helpers — the  teachers  and  preachers — in- 
stead of  plunging  in  to  rescue  them,  stand 
safely  upon  the  bank  and  weave  fine  theories 


The  Subject  Defined.  11 

of  freedom  while  those  submerged  are  drown- 
ing. And  thus  arises  the  charge  of  cowardice 
against  the  pulpit:  the  charge  that  it  is 
dumb  in  matters  that  challenge  the  animosity 
of  wealth  and  power ;  the  charge  that  the 
gaunt  and  meager  specter  of  Secularism 
scares  them  off  from  every  endeavor  to  en- 
large the  sphere  of  righteousness.  There  is 
a  sentiment  abroad  which  is  a  shame  to  the 
intelligence  of  our  age — a  sentiment  which 
declares  that  the  pulpit  is  exclusively  for 
what  is  called  "religious  talk."  Aught 
else  is  sacrilege,  even  though  that  some- 
thing else  threaten  the  very  life  of  all  re- 
ligion, even  though  it  threaten  the  dissolution 
of  society  itself. 

But  Judaism,  at  least,  may  claim  exemp- 
tion from  these  charges.  Though  she  as- 
pires unto  the  heavens,  she  still  treads  firm- 
ly the  earth.  It  is  hers  to  "  act,  act  in  the 
living  present,  heart  within  and  God  o'er- 
head."  "  In  full  accordance  with  the  spirit 
of  Mosaic  legislation,  which  strives  to  regu- 
late the  relation  between  rich  and  poor,  we 
deem  it  our  duty  to  participate  in  the  great 
task  of  modern  times,  to  solve,  on  the  basis 
of  justice  and  righteousness,  the  problems 
presented  by  the  contrasts  and  evils  of  the 
present  organization  of  society."  Such  is 
the  declaration  of  our  American  Rabbis  at 
the  Conference  of  American  Rabbis  held  at 
Pittsburgh,  Pa.,  Nov.  1885 ;  and  this  dec- 
laration is  in  perfect  accord  with  the  usual 
and  natural  impulse  and  deed  of  the  leaders 
of  Jewish  thought  throughout  history.  Ju- 
daism has  lived  in  the  world,  and  been  al- 
ways of  the  world,  to  make  the  world  more ' 
heavenly.  Through  all  the  centuries  of  her 
sorrowful  life  she  brought  the  energies  of 


12  The  Social   Question. 

brain  and  heart  to  bear  upon  all  the  practi- 
cal problems  of  man's  relation  to  the  eter- 
nal laws  of  our  eternal  God ;  she  has  through 
all  the  long  and  weary  centuries  lifted  up 
her  voice  to  denounce  oppression  and  plead 
for  the  oppressed. 

Pages  upon  pages  of  her  Bible  forbid  the 
oppression  of  the  poor ;  pages  upon  pages 
are  full  of  laws  for  their  maintenance  and 
help.  Folio  upon  folio  of  her  massive  liter- 
ature is  devoted  to  the  social  question  in  its 
whole  broad  range.  She  alone  of  all  the  world 
proclaimed  the  dignity,  the  duty  of  labor,  in 
her  command :  "  Six  days  shalt  thou  labor 
and  do  thy  work ; "  and  she,  through  the 
Sabbath,  by  her  queenly  fiat  has  unceasing- 
ly striven  to  check  the  mad  passion  for  ma- 
terial well-being,  which,  trampling  upon 
every  ideal  consideration  and  interest,  has 
degraded  the  dignity  of  man  to  the  conven- 
tional standard  of  possessing  and  enjoying 
mere  creature  comforts. 

We  speak  not  to  boast  but  to  plead  for 
right.  Whatever  be  the  charges  freely  made 
of  hypocrisy  and  cowardice  on  the  part  of 
religion,  let  there  be  a  halt  made,  and  ac- 
knowledgment rendered  to  Jews  and  to  Ju- 
daism. Many  of  the  master  minds  who 
have  lent  their  energies  to  the  solution  of 
the  all-absorbing  social  difficulties  of  the 
various  countries  and  peoples,  in  different 
ages,  were  Jews.  There  was  nothing  in  their 
religion  to  hinder  them  ;  nay,  the  codes  and 
precepts  of  Judaism  have  been  the  standard 
and  the  Court  of  Appeal  in  all  kindred  de- 
bates and  contentions.  Judaism  has,  indeed,' 
something  to  say  upon"  the  social  question,' 
and  its  teachers  will  not  fail  in  the, courage 
of  their  convictions  ;  \they  will  ],not  fail  .in 
the  overwhelming  duty_pf  the  hour  to  spread 


The  Subject  Defined.  13 

a  truer  knowledge  and  a  clearer  comprehen- 
sion of  this  sacred  and  all-important  matter. 
Upon  that  intelligence  and  comprehension 
depends  the  happiness  of  our  children,  if  not 
our  own,  for  politics  and  all  the  relations  of 
domestic  as  well  as  of  public  economy  are 
already  studded  with  new  social  queries  as 
a  bush  in  spring  is  studded  with  opening 
buds. 

To  this  task,  then,  we  must  come  all  of 
us — learners  as  well  as  teachers,  hearers  and 
speaker  alike — in  the  broad  and  philosophic 
spirit  of  our  little  understood  and  greatly 
maligned  religion ;  to  this  task  we  shall  all 
come,  I  trust,  our  hearts  aglow  with  the 
blaze  of  ardent  sympathy,  our  hands  stretch- 
ing forth  eagerly  and  warmly  to  grasp  the 
truth.  We  shall  strive  to  search  out  the 
true  meaning  of  the  social  question  in  its 
varying  phases  through  the  past  on  into  the 
present,  in  order  that  we  may  understand 
the  social  questions  of  to-day — their  out- 
come— and  find  the  Jewish  contribution  to 
the  solution  of  the  great  social  problems. 
We  shall  necessarily  pass  along  in  the  midst 
of  a  dismal  forest  of  fallacies,  overgrown 
with  the  rank  and  poisonous  weeds  of  error. 
We  shall  walk  often  under  the  clouds  of  the 
darkest  pessimism.  We  must  hew  a  path  and 
clear  a  way  in  the  dark  mazes  of  the  musty 
undergrowths  of  ignorance  and  dread,  and 
struggle  onward  into  the  open,  safe  paths  of 
an  enlightened  reassurance  in  the  eternity  of 
truth  and  right,  up  to  the  sunny  heights  of 
an  all-surveying  and  all-controlling  Justice. 

I  shall  not  presume  to  undertake  to  set 
up  any  new  hypotheses  on  the  great  social 
question,  but  only  in  the  name  of  Judaism 
to  give  enlightenment ;  only  to  seek  to  un- 
derstand and  interpret.  This  is  my  task. 


14  The  Social  Question. 

To  that  task  I  shall  lend  my  energies,  earn- 
estly praying,  with  the  great  Milton : 

What  in  me  is  dark, 

Illumine.    What  is  low,  raise  and  support ; 
That  to  the  height  of  this  great  argument 
I  may  assert  eternal  Providence 
And  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  men," 


Sources  of  the  Social  Difficulty.        15 


DISCOURSE  II. 

SOURCES  OF  THE  SOCIAL  DIFFICULTY. 

"  THERE  is,"  says  Emile  de  Laveleye,  "  in 
human  affairs  one  order  which  is  the  best. 
That  order  is  not  always  the  one  which  ex- 
ists, but  is  the  order  which  should  exist,  for 
the  greatest  good  of  humanity.  God  knows 
it  and  wills  it ;  man's  duty  it  is  to  discover 
and  establish  it." 

The  fulfillment  of  this  injunction,  "  to 
discover  and  establish  the  one  order  in 
human  affairs  which  is  the  best — this  is  the 
effort  to  which  we  are  called  upon  to  devote 
our  services.  What  has  the  experience  of 
man  to  say  ?  How  near  has  it  come  to  find- 
ing "  one  order  which  is  best  ?  "  These  are 
the  questions  with  which  we  naturally  be- 
gin our  investigation.  We  are  driven  to 
history  for  a  reply.  Here  the  first  difficulty 
presents  itself,  for  alas !  what  a  failure  are 
the  records  we  call  history !  We  go  to  them 
as  to  a  storehouse,  expecting  to  find  ample 
supplies  of  grain,  and  behold  there  are  only 
dry  husks  and  empty  shells.  The  history  of 
man  has  been  written,  but  not  the  history 
of  mankind.  Exaggerated  pictures  of  Caesars 
and  Napoleons,  Louis  and  Fredricks  make  up 
the  panorama.  Generals  with  their  hordes 
of  automatic  nonentities  called  armies  ;  kings 
posing  before  a  mass  of  blind  and  docile 
slaves  called  subjects ;  such  are  the  effigies 
that  are  presented  in  life-size  on  the  canvas 
of  history.  They  crowd  upon  and  fill  up  the 


16  The  Social  Question. 

scene  ;  national  life  forms  the  obscure  back- 
ground. Only  here  and  there  the  fact  that 
there  are  people  as  well  as  sovereigns  flashes 
out  in  blood-red  streaks  of  revolution. 

"  If  you  wish  to  understand  the  phenomena 
of  social  evolution,"  such  is  the  caustic  warn- 
ing of  Herbert  Spencer — "  you  will  not  do 
it,  though  you  should  read  yourself  blind 
over  the  biographies  of  all  the  great  rulers  on 
record  down  to  Frederick  the  Greedy,  and 
Napoleon  the  Treacherous." 

But  even  as  gold  is  washed  down  the 
mountains  in  minutest  particles  and  must  be 
sought  for  amid  the  rocks  and  sands,  so 
amidst  the  debris  of  centuries  we  must  search 
out  the  secret  of  that  "  one  order  in  human 
affairs  which  is  the  best."  Come  to  this 
task  all  ye  earnest  seekers  after  truth! 
Come  with  the  lamps  of  patient  inquiry ; 
cast  their  light  upon  the  phenomena  which, 
in  the  vague  and  scanty  records  of  history 
portray  the  evolution  of  social  life ;  let  the 
bright  rays  of  knowledge  irradiate  them; 
cause  them  to  become  more  and  more  clearly 
revealed;  make  them  stand  forth  tangible 
and  luminous ! 

At  the  very  entrance  of  our  study  of  the 
social  question,  however,  still  another  diffi- 
culty confronts  us.  If  you  would  study 
botany,  you  go  forth  into  the  fields  where 
the  whole  plant-world  is  spread  out  at  your 
feet.  If  you  would  study  geology,  the  rocks 
await  the  ringing  blows  of  your  hammer.  If 
you  would  study  the  topography  of  a  cer- 
tain region,  you  ascend  to  the  summit  of  a 
neighboring  mountain  and  overlook  the 
scene.  But  when  you  come  to  the  study  of 
social  science,  the  facts  you  have  to  deal 
with  are  not  spread  out  before  you  some- 
where, apart  from  you,  that  you  need  but  go 


Sources  of  the  Social  Difficulty.         17 

thither  and  examine  them.  Nay,  you  your- 
self are  a  part  of  the  study.  It  has  to  do 
with  man  in  all  his  relations.  You  can  not 
so  readily  free  yourself  ;  the  bonds  of  family, 
race,  country  and  religion  are  twined  about 

S3U  as  the  entangling  threads  of  a  web. 
ot  one  in  a  thousand  can  get  rid  of  his  pre- 
conceived notions,  prejudices,  errors,  super- 
stitions, preferences,  and  dislikes.  We  lie  im- 
bedded in  them,  enveloped  and  enfolded  by 
the  wraps  and  integuments  of  training,  habit 
and  education. 

To  mount  to  such  heights  of  imperson- 
ality, whence  we  may  look  out  over  the 
whole  range  of  the  changes  human  society  has 
undergone  and  is  undergoing  ;  to  withstand 
the  raging  and  disturbing  influences  of 
personal  interest,  of  religious  emotion  and 
patriotic  impulse — ah,  here  is  a  task  whose 
difficulty  may  well  stagger  the  boldest,  but 
it  is  a  task  from  which  no  earnest,  thoughtful, 
candid,  honest  man  dare  any  longer  shrink. 
The  Social  Question  must  be  faced.  Better 
that  we  prepare  to  meet  it,  however  difficult 
the  preparation,  than  be  confronted  and  over- 
whelmed by  it  ere  we  are  aware.  Though  its 
difficulty  overtop  and  threaten  us  as  an 
avalanche,,  yet  must  we  boldly  face  it  and 
lustily  clamber  up  the  precipitous  mountain 
of  our  present  duty. 

Some  master  minds,  despite  the  difficulty, 
have  reached  the  summits  of  knowledge 
whence  they  could  overlook  the  solemn  march 
of  the  human  family  through-the  ages.  They 
tell  us  that  this  endless  procession  of  all 
nations,  resistlessly  advancing,  here  in  con- 
fusion, there  in  contention,  now  hastening 
madly  forward,  now  wearily  dragging  along 
— that  it  is  not  "  like  the  erratic  phantasm  of  a 
dream,  without  reason  and  without  order," 
2 


18  The  Social  Question. 

but  that  all  are  marching  under  the  general- 
ship and  direction  of  law.  As  the  falling  of 
the  rain,  as  the  passing  of  the  cloud,  the 
soughing  of  the  wind  and  the  brilliant  sweep 
of  the  comet,  have  all  been  traced  to  the 
dominion  of  physical  law,  so  the  ever-chang- 
ing, ever-shifting  scenes  of  the  social  life  of 
nations  are  likewise  found  to  be  dominated 
by  economic  law. 

"  These  struggling  tides  of  life  that  seem 
In  wayward,  aimless  course  to  tend, 
Are  eddies  of  the  mighty  stream 
That  rolls  to  its  appointed  end." 

Such  a  conception  commands  itself  to  our 
intellects  by  its  very  majesty  and  grandeur. 
In  the  midst  of  the  vanishing  present  we 
discern  the  eternal.  "  From  the  life,  the 
pleasures,  the  suffering  of  humanity,  it  points 
to  the  impassive  ;  from  our  wishes,  wants 
and  woes  to  the  inexorable.  Leaving  the 
individual  beneath  the  eye  of  Providence,  it 
shows  society  under  the  finger  of  law."  * 
Therefore,  if  you  would  understand  the  social 
question,  you  must  begin  by  rinding  out  the 
laws  that  dominate  social  movements.  Ask  : 
What  was  the  source  of  the  social  difficulty  ? 
— yea,  what  created  a  social  question  ?  What 
is  the  underlying  principle  that  gave  it 
vitality  and  continuity  ? 

To  answer  these  queries  we  must  gather 
the  experience  of  mankind  as  through  a 
glass  you  gather  the  rays  of  the  sun  unto  a 
focus,  i.  e.,  through  logical  generalization  we 
must  interpret  the  phenomena  of  the  past. 
Thus,  and  only  thus,  can  we  discover  the 
touchstone  by  means,  of  which  we  shall  be 
able  to  distinguish  between  what  is  pro- 
gressive and  what  is  retrogressive,  between 

*  Draper.  Intellectual  Development  of  Europe. 


Sources  of  the  Social  Difficulty.        19 

what  is  desirable  and  what  is  ruinous,  be- 
tween what  is  practicable  and  what  is 
Utopian  in  the  schemes  that  swarm  to-day 
about  the  social  cauldron. 

To  begin  then  with  the  beginning : 

"  Before  man  made  us  citizens,  great 
Nature  made  us  men," 

and  as  in  the  acorn,  the  creation  of  a  thou- 
sand forests  is  dormant,  so  in  the  first  man 
lay  the  germinal  principle  of  all  social  order 
and  disorder.  When  the  son  of  Adam  hiding 
in  the  dismal  covert  of  some  primeval  forest, 
heard  the  accusing  voice  of  conscience  in 
bitter  tones  upbraid  him,  he  defiantly  made 
reply :  "  Am  I  my  brother's  keeper  ?  " 

Then  the  social  conflict  began.  That  was 
the  primitive  form  of  the  later  social  war-cry  : 
"  Let  every  man  look  out  for  himself.  Down 
with  the  claims  of  others.  The  strongest 
shall  rule !  "  Then  began  the  struggle  which 
in  the  moral  world  is  called  the  contest  be- 
tween selfishness  and  benevolence — egoism 
and  altruism,  and  what  in  the  social  world 
might  with  more  or  less  accuracy  be  denomi- 
nated the  contest  between  Individualism  and 
Collectivism.  As  soon  as  a  social  combi- 
nation of  individuals  arose  there  began  ac- 
tions and  reactions  between  these  individuals. 
Inequalities  arose  and  were  found.  At  once 
war  was  declared  against  the  absolute  sway 
of  individual  will.  That  was  the  simple  origin 
of  the  Social  Difficulty. 

"  As  from  inarticulate  sounds  came  speech ; 
as  out  of  rude  hieroglyphics  came  writing  and 
the  art  of  printing  ;  as  from  counting  on  our 
fingers  we  advanced  to  the  most  abstruse 
calculations  of  stellar  distances  and  revolu- 
tions ;  as  from  building  rude  habitations  in  the 
woods  we  gradually  improved  until  the  mas- 


20  The  Social  Question. 

sive  cathedral  was  thought  out  and  erected ; 
as  from  harsh  discordant  war-songs  we  as- 
cended to  symphonies,  and  oratorios,  and 
sonatas,  so  out  of  the  rude  impulsiveness  of 
the  first  association  of  man  and  man  came  by 
slow  degrees  the  refinements  of  our  modern 
social  life,  and  likewise  the  subtle  and  com- 
plex questions  of  social  relationship  which 
absorb  the  busy  brain  of  our  civilization."* 

The  history  of  the  contest  between  indi- 
vidualism and  its  opposing  impulse,  which 
might  best  be  called  Collectivism,  does  not 
move  forward  on  the  level  of  a  plane,  but 
rather  in  projections  and  depressions  like  the 
far-stretching  ridges  of  a  mountain  range. 
For  the  most  part  it  is  individual  despotism 
that  is  on  the  heights.  Imperators,  Czars  and 
Tyrants  rule  with  iron  hand.  At  rare  in- 
tervals a  Magna  Charta  or  a  Declaration  of 
Independence  is  proclaimed  from  the  sum- 
mits of  social  emancipation. 

It  was  in  the  family  that  the  social  ques- 
tion first  began,  because  the  family  was 
the  earliest  and  simplest  form  of  social  or- 
ganization. There  the  contest  has  been  inces- 
sant. There  have  been  unjust  ineqalities  in 
the  conditions  of  the  husband  and  wife,  parent 
and  child.  The  emancipation  of  women, 
for  example,  is  still  one  of  the  leading  forms 
of  the  social  question  to-day. 

The  family  developed  into  the  Clan,  the 
Tribe,  the  Community,  the  State.  In  each 
of  these,  unjust  inequality  arose.  Then 
came  the  cry  and  protest.  Thus  the  social 
question  sprang  up  spontaneously. 

In  politics  it  assumed  this  form :  "  Does 

the  Individual  exist  for  the    benefit  of   the 

State,  or  does  the  State  exist  for  the  benefit 

pf    the     Individual?"       This  is    the  rock 

*  Spencer's  Socqlogy, 


Sources  of  the  Social  Difficulty.         21 

upon  which  the  Ship  of  State  has  al- 
ways floundered  in  the  stormy  night  of 
revolutions.  But  even  now  philosophers 
and  statesmen  are  not  yet  agreed  upon 
the  safest  and  the  wisest  course  of  navi- 
gation. 

In  the  Community,  i.  e.,  in  that  aggrega- 
tion of  men  in  which  all  put  forth  their  ener- 
gies for  the  maintenance  of  life  and  the  im- 
provement of  its  conditions,where  they  stand 
related  as  producer  and  consumer,  as  master 
and  servant,  as  lord  and  serf,  as  owner  and 
slave,  as  employer  and  wage-earner,  as  capi- 
talist and  laborer — in  all  these  relationships 
the  social  question  has  formed  its  largest 
history;  there  the  inequalities  have  been 
broadest,  boldest  and  bitterest. 

Therefore  its  protest  has  been  the  loudest, 
therefore  it  is  so  clamorous  to-day.  In  this 
phase,  which  is  now  regarded  specifically  as 
the  "  Social  Question,"  it  will  claim  our  at- 
tention in  these  discourses,  for  wherever  we 
turn  its  din  and  tumult  is  in  our  ears,  wher- 
ever we  go  the  glare  of  its  fireband  flashes 
on  our  sight.  In  all  its  latest  forms  it  is 
still  the  conflict  of  the  individualistic  against 
the  collectivistic  impulses.  The  extremes 
have  been  found.  Anarchy  is  "  individual- 
ism run  riot."  Communism  is  its  utter  ex- 
tinction. 

These  then  are  the  answers  to  the  queries 
that  we  propounded.  In  the  Family,  in  the 
Community,  in  the  State,  everywhere  the 
source  of  the  social  difficulty  was  unjust  so- 
cial inequality.  The  protest  against  this  ine- 
quality created  in  every  age  asocial  question. 
The  struggle  of  and  against  individual  domi- 
nance, this  afforded  the  underlying  principle 
that  gave  vitality  and  continuity  to  the  social 
contest.  At  times  the  wail  of  this  social  jro- 


22  The  Social  Question. 

test  has  startled  the  world;  again,  like  a 
keen  blade  it  has  cut  humanity  to  the  quick 
and  made  its  bleeding  heart  to  quiver. 

"  It  was  from  Judea,"  says  that  most  gift- 
ed exponent  of  the  social  question,  Emile  de 
Laveleye,*  "  It  was  from  Judea  that  there 
arose  the  most  persistent  protest  against  ine- 
quality and  the  most  ardent  aspirations  after 
justice  that  have  ever  raised  humanity  out 
of  the  actual  into  the  ideal.  We  feel  the 
effect  still.  It  is  thence  has  come  that  leav- 
en of  evolution  which  still  moves  the  world. 
Job  saw  evil  triumph  and  yet  believed  in 
justice.  Israel's  prophets  while  thundering 
against  iniquity  announced  the  good  time 
coming." 

Opposite  both  the  contending  influences 
of  social  life  Judaism  has  lifted  up  her  pro- 
test. "  Love  thyself, "  says  Judaism.  This  is 
the  natural  condition,  this  is  axiomatic  and 
implied ;  but  remember  it  is  never  by  itself 
a  moral  injunction.  Never  shall  it  be  sepa- 
rated and  wrenched  from  its  place  in  the 
eternal  precept:  "  Love  thy  neighbor  as 
thyself.  "  Selfishness,  egoism,  as  an  exclu- 
sive motive  is  entirely  false ;  but  benevo- 
lence in  its  largest  sense.  Altruism,  is  not, 
therefore,  entirely  and  exclusively  right.  It 
likewise  may  defeat  itself.  It  may  prove 
a  positive  injury — a  crime.  It  is  wrong  for 
the  worthy  to  be  sacrificed  in  order  to  pre- 
serve the  unworthy.  It  is  a  sin  for  you  to 
give  your  hard-earned  money  to  a  vagabond 
or  a  confirmed  drunkard,  by  him  to  be  squan- 
dered. 

Thus  has   Judaism  pointed  the  ideal  in 

this  conflict  of  social  principles.     True,  she 

has  pointed  high.      All  the  generations  of 

bygone  ages  have  failed  in  their  efforts  to 

*  Socialism  qf  to-day. 


Sources  of  the  Social  Difficulty.        23 

attain  it.  We,  too,  no  doubt,  will  also  fail 
in  the  ultimate  adjustment  of  all  things  in 
perfect  equity  and  righteousness.  Time's 
hour-glass  will,  ere  that  day,  have  run  its 
sands  of  gold  ten  thousand  thousand  times 
perhaps.  Our  golden  age  —  the  Messianic 
era  of  Judaism — lies  not  in  the  dead,  irrevo- 
cable past,  but  in  the  promise  of  the  fruitful 
days  to  come.  The  millennium  will  come  in 
after  the  solution  of  the  social  problems, 
after  men  shall  have  discovered  and  estab- 
lished that  "  one  order  in  human  affairs 
which  is  the  best." 

Our  duty  in  the  present  is  to  stand  not 
in  doubt,  but  to  solve  our  own  immediate 
difficulties — the  present  and  the  living  phases 
of  this  world-problem,  to  solve  them  by  the 
guidance  of  our  golden  precept,  to  push  on 
in  good  attempts,  to  still  move  forward  to- 
ward our  lofty  ideal,  though  that  effort 
means,  as  it  does  mean : 

"  To  suffer  woes  which  Hope  thinks  infinite;  ^ 
To  forgive  wrongs  darker  than  the  death  of  night; 
To  defy  power  which  seems  omnipotent; 
To  love  and  bear ;  to  hope  till  hope  creates, 
From  its  own  wreck,  the  thingit  contemplates." 


24  The  Social  Question. 


DISCOURSE 

HAVE  THE  POOH  GROWN  POORER  ? 

THERE  is  avery  ancient  legend  among  the 
Hebrew  traditions  which  tells  of  a  mighty 
giant  of  Bashan  named  Og.  It  is  said  that 
he  lived  at  the  time  of  the  flood,  and  was  of 
such  enormous  stature  that  when  the  waters 
descended  and  covered  the  earth  until  they 
stood  fifteen  cubits  above  the  highest  moun- 
tain tops  he,  nevertheless,  towered  above 
the  heaving  billows  and  walked  along  in 
safety,  guiding  the  course  of  the  Ark.  Thus, 
says  the  legend,  he  escaped  the  all-devouring 
deluge  and  lived  thereafter  for  thousands 
and  thousands  of  years. 

Whatever  may  have  stimulated  the  fancy 
of  men  to  invent  this  primitive  story,  there 
is  an  earnest  significance  in  it  which  attaches, 
with  peculiar  aptness,  to  the  theme  upon 
which  we  are  now  discoursing. 

Oppression,  injustice,  cruelty,  every  form 
of  moral  obliquity  had  descended  upon  the 
earth  and  deluged  it  as  with  a  flood.  But, 
towering  high  above  its  seething  waters, 
through  all  the  ages,  stalked  unharmed  the 
personified  Spirit  of  Justice,  guiding  to  the 
haven  of  safety  the  oppressed  and  injured, 
the  abused  and  derided  among  men. 

Since  the  very  beginning  of  the  contest 
against  Individualism — from  the  very  incep- 
tion of  society  there  have  been  men  and 
women  who  were  oppressed  and  abused 
because  they  subservient  and  dependent— 


Have  the  Poor  Q-rown  Poorer  ?         25 

there  have  been  subjects  hanging  upon 
the  breath  of  their  rulers,  workmen  bend- 
ing under  the  rod  of  their  masters.  For 
these  Justice  has  still  outlived  the  deluge  of 
wrong,  passing  through  gory  seas  of  blood- 
shed and  death.  At  last — I  firmly  believe  it — 
at  last  the  bowof  promise  is  to  be  discerned 
in  the  skies  and  the  weary  dove  is  hastening 
homeward  with  the  token  of  peace.  What- 
ever be  the  storms  we  shall  have  still  to 
through  in  this  social  strife,  now  that  the 
clouds  are  discharging  their  worst  burdens, 
there  must  soon  come  cessation  and  calm. 
There  are  signs  of  this.  I  take  one  of  these 
signs  to  be  the  extraordinarily  improved 
condition  of  the  working  people.  Such  a 
statement  may  sound  very  paradoxical  and 
absurd  in  the  face  of  the  continuous  com- 
plaining we  hear,  and  in  the  face  of  the 
deeds  of  violence  we  see ;  but  it  is  my  ear- 
nest conviction  that  most  of  the  social  com- 
motion in  the  midst  of  which  we  live,  arises 
out  of  a  very  palpable  falsehood,  out  of  an 
unwarranted  assumption,  oft  repeated,  that 
the  condition  of  the  working  people  is  worse 
to-day  than  ever  it  was. 

An  increasing  number  of  persons,  of 
whom  Mr.  Henry  George  is  the  able  repre- 
sentative and  leader,  are  sounding  high  and 
low  this  cry  of  alarm,  "  the  poor  are  grow- 
ing poorer !  "  They  take  up  a  current  im- 
pression and  assert  it  as  a  fact,  and  firmly 
believe  in  it.  Upon  this  they  build  up  their 
systems  of  speculation,  write  books,  organ- 
ize societies,  make  speeches,  instigate  con- 
tention, add  fuel  to  existing  strife,  and  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  spur  on  the  hot- 
headed and  ignorant  to  violence  and 
bloodshed. 

Out  of  this  empty  assertion  men  are  led 


26  The  Social  Queslion. 

into  a  miserable  and  unwarranted  pessimism. 
They  give  up  in  despair,  crying  "  Cursed  be 
the  day  on  which  we  were  born."  They 
deny  God  and  the  moral  law :  "  Away  with 
these  haunting  nightmares  of  our  dreams  !  " 
With  ruthless  blows  they  hew  away  at  the 
supports  of  religion :  "  Down  with  the  beams 
and  rafters  of  this  aged  and  crumbling 
structure." 

It  is  this  assertion  that  the  poor  are  poorer 
than  ever  before  which  we  must  put  to  the 
stern  test  of  fact.  Who  then  are  the  poor  ? 
If  you  would  put  the  knife  of  discernment 
right  through  this  apple  of  discord,  then 
recognize  at  once  the  gulf  that  divides 
pauperism  from  poverty.  "  The  pauper  and 
the  poor  man  stand  on  opposite  poles ;  the 
whole  diameter  of  manhood  stretches  between 
them."  The  pauper  cries,  "  Society  owes 
me  a  living,"  and  seeks  to  get  it  out  of  the 
industry  of  others.  The  poor  man  is  he  who, 
though  owing  nothing,  recognizes  that  it  is 
not  man's  misfortune,  but  his  privilege  and 
duty  to  work,  and  sets  about  earning  a  living 
for  himself  and  those  dependent  on  him. 

The  chief  social  problem,  some  one  has  well 
said,  ought  to  be :  "  What  is  to  be  done  with 
the  drones  the  idlers,  the  lazy  people  in 
palaces  and  huts,  and  the  tramps  on  the  high 
roads?  "  Instead  of  this  the  proposition  is 
set  up  that  we  must  get  rid  of  poverty. 
It  is  true  that  the  complicated  institution 
we  call  Society  ought  to  be  regarded  as  a 
grand  partnership.  By  means  of  it  we  all 
reap  benefits  through  united  action,  which 
would  otherwise  be  unattainable,and  through 
these  benefits  some  corresponding  obligations 
that  we  dare  not  shirk.  It  is  in  meeting 
these  obligations  that  we  must  distinguish 
clearly  those  who  have  from  those  who  have 


Have  the  Poor  Grrown  Poorer  ?        27 

not  a  righteous  claim.  Only  those  who, 
under  the  universal  laws  of  an  All- Wise 
God,  have  become  the  victims  of  circum- 
stances which  the  best  efforts  of  industry, 
prudence  and  virtue  could  not  forestall  and 
the  keenest  prevision  of  the  most  advanced 
intelligence  could  not  detect ;  those  who  in 
the  great  cause  of  human  events  have  fallen 
under  the  wheels  of  disappointment  through 
calamities,  not  to  be  foreseen,  have  a  claim 
— a  claim  upon  our  charity  which  is  sustained 
by  the  law,  enforced  by  the  dictates  of  ethics 
and  urged  by  all  the  sanctities  of  religion. 
Justice  at  its  best  will  extirpate  pauperism, 
— charity  at  its  best  will  alleviate  poverty 
— but  as  to  abolishing  it,  this  never  will  be, 
this  never  can  be  accomplished — as  long  as 
the  difference  in  human  ability  and  energy 
and  worth  continues  ;  as  long  as  some  will 
outstrip  others  in  exertion,  and  gain  more  ; 
as  long  as  there  are  those  who  will  never 
save  or  deny  themselves  in  the  present  for 
the  days  of  helplessness  or  old  age.  This 
difference,  indeed,  is  the  basis  of  all  industrial 
effort  and  progress. 

Here  Mercy  has  a  task  to  perform.  The 
utmost  that  Justice  can  do  is,  to  gain  for  the 
poor  man  the  freedom  to  do  whatever  work 
he  chooses  and  to  secure  for  him  the  fruit 
of  his  own  toil,  so  that  it  may  be  within  his 
power  by  self-help  to  remove  the  burden  of 
poverty.  Now  it  is  asserted  that  Justice  is 
doing  this  less  to-day  than  ever  before,  and 
therefore  the  poor  are  poorer  than  ever  they 
were. 

Let  us  then  look  upon  the  condition  of 
the  laborer  in  the  various  eras  of  the  past 
and  contrast  it  with  the  present  and  see 
whether  it  is  true,  as  Mr.  George  claims, 
that  "  the  tendency  of  what  we  call  material 


28  The  Social  Question. 

progress  is  in  nowise  to  improve  the  condi- 
tion of  the  lowest  class  in  essentials  of  healthy, 
happy  human  life.  Nay,  more,  that  it  is  to  still 
further  depress  the  condition  of  the  lowest 
class.'** 

To  begin,  then,  with  the  earliest  times. 
First  among  the  pioneers  of  mankind,  our 
greatest  benefactor  is  Egypt.  We  choose 
Egypt  for  this  comparison  between  present 
and  most  ancient  clays,  because  Egypt  (by 
contrast  with  nerveless,  apathetic  India  and 
other  Oriental  Monarchies)  offers  such  strik- 
ing points  of  contact  between  the  aims  of 
her  civilization  and  ours,  that  in  the  study 
of  them  our  hearts  vibrate  and  tremble  as 
with  the  passing  of  an  electric  current  of 
like  thoughts,  like  interests,  and  like  hopes. 

Now  observe  what  was  the  social  condition 
of  the  Egyptians.  The  caste  system  prevailed. 
Priests  and  soldiers  were  the  two  ruling 
orders.  All  mechanical  trades  were  held  in 
contempt.  The  peaceful  shepherd,  as  we 
know  from  the  story  of  Joseph  and  his 
brethren,  was  despised.  The  swineherds  were 
not  even  permitted  to  enter  the  temples  of 
worship.  The  poor  man,  the  laborer  in 
Egypt,  was  a  slave ;  he  could  own  no  land, 
rise  to  no  political  power.  In  the  condition 
in  which  he  was  born  he  was  forced  to  remain ; 
from  that  rank  he  was  forced  to  marry  and 
the  children  were  doomed  to  continue  the 
degraded  life  of  parents  without  a  hope  of 
improvement.! 

Mark  from  what  I  shall  tell  you  whether 
there  is  anything  in  any  condition  of  the  work- 
ing classes  of  our  day  that  will  in  the  least 

*  Progress  and  Poverty. 

*  Kenrick.    Ancient  Egypt. 


Have  the  Poor  Grown  Poorer?        29 

compare  with  the  hardships,  the  misery  and 
the  cruelty  which  the  toilers  of  Egypt  en- 
dured. 

The  wonderful  Pyramids,  the  gorgeous 
temples,  the  gigantic  obelisks  and  towering 
colossi,  all  of  which  still  remain  to-day  the  un- 
solved mystery,  the  amazement  and  wonder 
of  the  world,  are  nothing  but  monuments 
to  the  shame  of  that  ancient  civilization, 
written  all  over  with  the  records  of  the  in- 
human degradation  of  man  by  his  fellow- 
man.  It  took  360,000  people  twenty  years 
to  built  one  of  those  pyramids.  All  the  gold 
that  has  been  dug  from  the  hills  of  California 
would  not  have  sufficed  to  have  paid  free 
men,  working  for  honest  hire,  to  undergo 
the  slavery  that  was  needed  to  erect  them. 
"  They  tell  us,"  (says  Dr.  Henry  Brugsch 
Bey,  the  most  noted  of  Egyptologists)  u  more 
emphatically  than  living  speech  or  written 
words  of  the  tears  and  the  pains,  the  suffer- 
ing and  miseries  of  a  whole  population  which 
was  condemned  to  erect  these  everlasting 
monuments  of  Pharaohnic  vanity.  Thirty 
centuries  even  could  not  efface  the  curse 
resting  on  their  memory.  When  Herodotus, 
about  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century  B.  C., 
visited  the  field  of  the  great  Pyramid  at 
Gizeh  the  Egyptians  told  him  of  the  im- 
precations wrung  from  their  unhappy  fore- 
fathers, and  they  would  not  from  a  feel- 
ing of  abhorrence  so  much  as  utter  the 
names  of  the  kings  who  constructed  the  two 
highest  Pyramids."  It  took  200,000  men 
three  years  to  carry  a  huge  stone — designed 
for  the  portico  of  a  temple  in  Sais,  the  ancient 
capital  of  Egypt, — an  ordinary  twenty  days' 
journey.  The  building  of  the  canal  of  the 
Red  Sea  cost  120,000  lives. 

Men,  women,  and  children,  the  feeble  and 


30  The  Social  Question. 

the  aged,  all  alike  felt  the  scourge  of  the 
taskmaster.  They  knew  no  joy  "  by  reason 
of  anguish  of  spirit  and  cruel  bondage." 
Hounded  to  their  tasks,  they  fell  under 
the  weight  of  their  burdens  and  died  miser- 
ably in  their  own  tracks.  In  the  light  of 
these  facts  the  opening  chapters  of  Exodus 
convey  a  new  meaning  to  us,  and  we  can 
no  longer  wonder  that  the  deliverance 
from  Egyptian  bondage  heads  the  "  Ten 
Commandments."  and  that  reference  to  this 
deliverance  is  constantly  made — about  one 
hundred  times  in  the  Pentateuch  and  re- 
peatedly in  all  later  writings  of  the  Hebrews. 
The  condition  of  the  laborers  in  Egypt  at 
the  time  of  the  Pharaohs  may  serve  as  a 
faithful  index  of  their  condition  in  all  other 
lands  of  those  ancient  days.  In  some  of  the 
Oriental  monarchies  it  was  still  worse.  * 

Has  there  been  any  improvement  in  the 
condition  of  the  laborers  since  those  days  ? 
Are  the  poor  worse  off  to-day  in  our  most 
civilized  land,  then  they  were  in  the  most 
civilized  land  of  antiquity  ?  It  is  puerile  to 
ask.  Even  at  this  stage  of  our  investigations 
we  are  able  to  say,  that  never  before  in  the 
world's  history  have  the  laboring  people 
wielded  such  a  power,  social  and  political,  as 
they  do  to-day  :  that  though  there  is  misery 
enough,  God  knows,  yet  never  have  men 
been  freer  to  choose  their  own  work  ;  never 
have  they  so  fully  reaped  the  fruits  of  their 
toil.  All  this  a  further  contrast  with  tliQ 
past  will  confirm. 

In  passing  we  will  only  remark  here  that 
what  gives  such  gravity  to  the  social  ques- 
tion to.day  is  the  constant  prating  about  the 
modern  slavery  of  the  wage-worker  and  the 
clamor  for  things  undreamed  of  and  unattain- 
*  Rawlinson,  Seven  Great  Monarchies. 


Have  the  Poor  Grrown  Poorer  ?       31 

able.  The  laborer  needs  to  hold  this  mirror 
of  history  up  before  him.  We,  who  are  all 
laborers,  must  look  to  the  rock  whence  we 
were  hewn.  We  must  recollect  that  through- 
out weary  ages  the  despotism  of  the  State 
was  absolute  and  the  flood  tides  of  oppression 
swept  on  unhindered.  Justice  has  stemmed 
the  current,  has  triumphantly  erected  itself 
above  the  destroying  waters,  and  guided  the 
miserable  slave  of  ancient  days  to  the  haven 
of  the  better  conditions  of  the  laborer  of  to- 
day. 

Mr.  George  admits  indeed  that  the  con- 
ditions of  the  lowest  classes  have  in  some 
places,  and  in  some  respects  been  raised,  but 
affirms  that,  "  There  is  no  where  any  im- 
provement which  can  be  credited  to  increas- 
ed productive  power,  and  that  the  lowest 
class  does  not  share  in  these  gains." 

He  forgets  that  the  iron-roller,  and  the 
glass-blower,  and  the  railroad-hand,  who 
complain  the  most  noisily  about  the  op- 
pression of  labor,  are  now  better  taken  care 
of,  well  or  sick,  than  kings  were  a  thousand 
years  ago.*  He  forgets  that  through  in- 

*  Senator  George  recently  propounded  a  number  of 
enquiries  with  regard  to  the  conditions  of  labor  and  the 
distribution  of  wealth,  to  Mr.  Edward  Atkinson,  a 
gentleman  famed  for  his  great  knowledge  of  statistics 
relating  to  these  subjects.  The  answers  of  Mr.  Atkinson 
disprove  the  popular  fallacy  that  the  poor  are  becoming 
poorer,  in  proportion,  as  the  wealth  of  the  rich  is  in- 
creasing. Everything  in  this  country  has  an  upward 
tendency.  Population  is  increasing,  and  labor-saving, 
mechanical  implements,  invented  in  vast  numbers, 
have  increased  mechanical  productions,  and  furnished 
extra  employment  to  skilled  labor.  While  the  products 
of  this  labor  are  placed  upon  the  markets  at  cheaper 
rates,  the  result  of  this  condition  of  affairs  is,  that 
greater  time  prevails  for  intellectual  pleasures,  and  a 
number  of  articles  heretofore  the  special  property  of  the 
extremely  wealthy,  now  conduce  to  the  pleasure  and 
enjoyment  of  the  toiling  masses.  In  the  last  twenty-five 
years,  Mr.  Atkinson  shows  that  the  wages  of  the  laborer 
has  been  greatly  enhanced,  the  duration  of  his  hours  of 


32  The  Social  Question. 

creased  productive  power,  and  only  thus 
can  he  to-day  put  shoes  on  all  his  children 
while  only  two  hundred  years  ago  his  ances- 
tors went  bare  foot ;  that  he  can  put  clothes 
on  their  back,  even  though  he  don't  know 
how  to  make  them  himself,  while  a  hundred 
years  ago  and  less,  the  workmen  wore  only 
what  they  themselves  made,  and  ate  only 
such  food  as  they  could  raise  by  their  own 
labor.  He  forgets  that  the  process  of  the 
social  evolution,  like  that  of  any  unfolding, 
is  slow  and  steady,  that  it  can  not,  it  will  not 
be  hastened.  However  we  fret  and  fume,  it  is 
in  vain.  Not  all  at  once,  even  if  ever,  can 
we  have  society  elevated  from  its  very 
foundations,  the  poor  lifted  above  the  pos- 
sibility of  want,  the  very  lowest  exempt  from 
anxiety  for  the  material  needs  of  subsistence ; 
the  poorest  laborer's  life  a  holiday ;  youth 
no  longer  stunted  and  starved  ;  age  no  longer 
harried  by  avarice ;  the  child  at  play  with  the 
tiger ;  discord  turned  into  harmony. 

Yet  such  are  the  dizzy  dreams  the  cham- 
pions of  labor  have  dared  to  dream.  Con- 
fusing the  just  claims  of  the  poor  man  with 
the  absurd  demand  of  the  shiftless  pauper, 
they  throw  into  the  way  of  the  natural  pro- 
gress of  these  claims  towards  realization  the 

labor  lessened,  and  the  purchasing  power  of  his  wages 
vastly  increased.  Here  are  some  of  the  statistics  prov- 
ing these  facts,  as  derived  from  the  answers  of  Mr. 
Atkinson  to  Senator  George's  enquiries:  The  average 
earnings  of  mechanics,  in  different  trades,  in  sixty  dif- 
ferent establishments  in  I860,  was  a  yearly  average  of 
$468  in  gold.  Kow  the  average  is  $720.  Of  the  purchas- 
ing power  of  these  wages,  food,  clothing,  shoes,  and 
everything  but  house  rents,  is  so  changed  in  their 
relative  value  from  1860  to  1886  that  a  year's  earnings 
in  I860,  which  would  buy  1,572  daily  portions  of  the 
necessaries  of  life,  in  1886  purchased  2,400  portions 
of  the  same  ;  and  substantially  the  skilled  laborer  pro- 
duces 80  to  100  per  cent,  more  at  present  for  a  year's 
work,  than  in  1860,  while  the  common  laborer  receives 
an  increase  of  forty  and  fifty  per  cent,  in  the  same  time 


Have  the  Poor  Grrown  Poorer?        33 

barrier  of  hasty,  ruinous  action,  based  on 
weak  and  palpable  fallacies.  The  denial  of 
progress  and  inprovernent  in  the  condition 
of  the  poor  is  such  a  fallacy.  It  comes  of 
blindness  to  the  facts  of  history,  blindness  to 
the  fact  that  everywhere  better  modes  of 
life  are  made  possible  by  civilization,  and 
higher  standards  of  life  set  up.  Because 
these  are  not  yet  attained  everywhere  and 
by  all,  is  it  right  to  curse  God  and  man? 
What  we  hear  are  the  mad  ravings  of  men 
intoxicated  by  deep  draughts  from  the  new- 
found waters  of  freedom.  The  delirium  will 
pass-.  The  righteous  claims  of  reasoning 
men  will  be  heard.  Justice  will  hold  her 
own  course,  whatever  floods  impede. 
3 


34  The  Social  Question. 


DISCOURSE  IV. 

HAVE  THE  POOR  GROWN  POORER  ? 
{Continued?) 

A  MOST  terrible  indictment  against  our 
civilization  is  made  by  those  who  charge 
that  the  poor  are  growing  poorer  and  more 
numerous  than  ever.  Looking  at  this 
charge  in  the  light  of  fact  I  would  say  to 
you — Do  not  believe  it.  1  say  this  although 
I  know  full  well  how  poor  the  poor  are.  I 
am  not  deaf  to  the  cries  of  woe  that  are 
wrung  from  them  by  the  hardships  of  to- 
day. My  heart  is  troubled  with  anguish. 
In  my  ears  are  ringing  the  pitiful  moanings 
of  those  who  are  drudging  for  the  dregs  of 
subsistence.  I  have  heard  the  wail  of  de- 
spair that  comes  up  from  cellars  and  hovels 
and  is  re-echoed  from  garrets  and  tenements 
that  are  filthy  with  the  festering  sores  of 
physical  and  moral  corruption.  Not  in  vain 
has  the  wild  outburst  of  men  maddened 
with  frenzy  been  ringing  in  my  ears  since 
those  terrible  days  of  the  memorable  Pitts- 
burgh railroad  riot  of  1877,  when  I,  a  won- 
dering youth,  followed  the  mob  and  saw  the 
red  hand  of  Anarchy  wield  the  torch  of  de- 
struction, saw  stores  looted,  houses  demol- 
ished and  the  flames  with  forked  tongues 
lick  up  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars' 
worth  of  property,  saw  women  rage,  men  in 
drunken  glee,  citizens  terrified,  soldiers 
panic-stricken.  The  scene  is  burned  in. 


Have  the  Poor  Grown  Poorer.         35 

upon  my  memory,  and  the  affrighting  inter- 
rogatories then  raised — Why  are  men  so 
driven?  Whence  is  this  madness? — have 
ever  since  clamored  in  my  breast  for  a  re- 
ply. 

I  have  found  out  that  it  is  owing  to  the 
social  agitator  of  to-day  who  poses  as  the 
friend  of  humanity,  "  the  champion  of  la- 
bor." To  his  guilt  most  of  this  new  frenzy 
among  laborers  is  to  be  charged.  You  can- 
not call  him  a  friend  of  the  laboring  man 
who  falsely,  whether  through  conscious 
error  or  blinded  by  a  fanatic  advocacy  of 
some  new-fangled  social  theory,  would  make 
him  believe  that  he  is  worse  off  to-day  than 
ever,  in  the  essentials  of  healthy,  happy  hu- 
man life. 

It  is  because  I  would  dry  the  weeping 
eyes,  would  hush  the  sobs  of  the  mothers 
and  children,  would  clothe  and  warm  their 
shivering  bodies,  would  satisfy  the  pangs  of 
hunger,,  that  I  would  speak  to  men  and  bid 
them  be  men  indeed ;  to  check  the  wild 
passion  that  makes  monsters  of  them,  and 
instead  yield  to  the  sober  sway  of  earnest, 
reasoned  truth,  for  thus,  and  only  thus,  may 
they  hope  to  devise  and  achieve  means  of 
betterment  in  their  condition.  Therefore  . 
do  I  warn  them  against  this  falsehood  which 
breeds  discontent  in  their  breasts,  lodges 
misery  in  their  homes,  and  lets  loose  blood- 
shed on  the  streets — the  falsehood  that  their 
condition  to-day  is  worse  than  ever  that  of 
laborers  was  in  the  past. 

I  say  to  you  emphatically  it  is  false  :  false 
as  the  face  of  hypocrisy.  In  the  onward 
sweep  of  history  there  is  no  sucK.  law  as  that 
the  poor  are  growing  poorer.  In  the  un- 
ceasing conflict  against  the  individualism  of 
the  Tyrant  and  the  individualism  of  the. 


36  The  Social  Question. 

State  there  has  been  progress,  a  betterment 
of  conditions,  a  steady  evolution  of  social 
justice.  Despite  all  this  wretchedness  of 
to-day  the  world  is  better  and  its  conditions 
improving.  This  the  modern  agitators  do 
not,  will  not  see.  This  is  their  crime  against 
industry.  They  run  from  the  open  field 
of  history  and  get  entangled  in  the  narrow 
thickets  of  local  or  temporary  conditions. 

If  the  social  status  of  the  poor  laborer  has 
ever  been  better  we  want  to  know,  in  order 
that  we  may  restore  the  modes  and  forms 
that  rendered  this  possible.  Therefore,  is 
this  a  question  not  to  be  evaded :  Has  his- 
tory any  such  a  poor  man's  paradise  to  tell 
of?  It  certainly  did  not  exist  in  remote  an- 
tiquity. We  have  shuddered  at  the  horrors 
unspeakable  in  the  condition  of  the  Egyp- 
tian slave  ;  we  have  sighed  for  pity  with  the 
outcasts  in  their  degradation,  and  our  hearts 
were  melted  in  sorrow  as  we  retold  the  long- 
forgotteri  tale  of  woe,  of  those  myriads  of 
mortals  who  died  in  chains  and  drudgery  to 
the  shame  of  that  ancient  civilization. 

But  perhaps  other  countries — those  about 
whose  names  the  lustre  of  a  still  greater 
fame  is  cast — may  have  much  happier  scenes 
-to  present.  Let  us  look  in  upon  Athens  in  its 
greatest  glory,  and  upon  Imperial  Rome  in 
the  brilliant  centuries  of  her  glorious  Em- 
pire. What  was  the  condition  of  the  laborer 
then  ?  We  speed  along  across  the  waters, 
borne  by  the  breath  of  imagination  to  the 
restored  places  of  that  ancient  world.  We 
land  at  the  Piraeus, 

"  Where  on  the  JEgean  shore  a  city  stands 
Built  nobly  ;  pure  the  air  and  light  the  soil; 
Athens,  the  eye  of  Greece,  mother  of  arts 
And  eloquence,  native  to  famous  wits." 

We  ride  along  by  the  great  wall  built  by 


Have  the  Poor  Grown  Poorer?        37 

Pericles,  which  connects  the  city  with  the 
port.  The  sun  has  just  come  up  and  his  ear- 
liest rays  as  they  break  on  the  city  reveal  the 
summit  of  the  far-famed  Acropolis,  covered 
with  temples  of  gods  and  heroes,  adorned 
with  the  finest  productions  of  the  architect, 
and  the  sculptor.  Through  the  transparent 
clearness  of  the  Athenian  atmosphere  we 
see  high  above  the  brilliant  whiteness  and 
varied  colors  of  the  temples  and  museums, 
the  colossal  ivory  statue  of  the  Virgin  God- 
dess Athene,  the  master-piece  of  the  world's 
greatest  artist,  Phidias,  rising  majestically 
and  looking  serenely  toward  the  sea,  her 
queenly  brow  radiant  with  the  kisses  of  the 
morning  sun. 

It  is  but  dawn,  but  already  the  streets  are 
filling  with  people  hastening  to  the  market 
in  the  center  of  the  city  where  the  main 
streets  cross  and  where  the  public  edifices 
are.  We  see  that  the  Athenian  citizens 
virtually  live  in  the  public  places.  It  is 
their  business  to  be  there.  Here  are  all  the 
men,  old  men,  youths  and  striplings.  Here 
Socrates  was  wont  to  walk  with  thoughtful 
mien  and  piercing  eye.  Here  Diogenes  car- 
ried his  lantern,  seeking  at  broad  daylight 
for  men,  true  men. 

Here,  as  we  pass  up  and  down  the  narrow 
streets  to  view  the  sights,  we  see  men, 
sitting  before  the  porticos  of  the  public 
buildings,  arguing  hour  after  hour  on  po- 
litical affairs,  discussing  the  news  and  talk- 
ing about  the  latest  games,  or  the  races. 
We  see  them,  cane  in  hand,  strolling  along, 
visiting  the  shops,  the  markets  and  the  public 
baths.  Almost  every  body  seems  to  be  attend- 
ed. A  man  walks  alongside  carrying  a 
folding  chair,  which  he  prepares  for  his 
master  to  sit  upon  when  fatigued. 


38  The  Social  Question. 

We  introduce  ourselves  to  one  of  these 
citizens.  He  with  the  proverbial  hospitality 
of  the  Greek,  invites  us  to  his  home  to  dine. 
We  are  first  led  to  the  bath ;  a  slave  attends 
us.  We  then  take  our  places  on  the  soft 
cushions  and  recline  at  the  table ;  a  slave 
assists  us.  All  about  us  are  slaves,  who 
deck  us  with  garlands,  who  serve  us  with 
food,  who  see  to  our  every  comfort  and  want. 
We  inquire,  and  from  the  conversation  we 
learn  that  all  society  in  Greece  is  divided 
into  two  classes,  the  conquerors  and  the 
conquered — the  Greeks  and  the  barbarians, 
i.  e.)  the  citizens  and  the  slaves,  among  the 
latter  some  few  freedmen,  still  socially 
regarded  as  of  the  slaves.  In  Athens  there 
are  over  half  a  million  of  souls  ;  fully  four 
fifths  are  slaves.  There  are  on  an  average 
twenty  slaves  to  each  household — about 
three  slaves  to  every  citizen.  Slaves  are 
in  the  markets,  slaves  in  the  shops,  slaves  at 
the  baths,  slaves  in  the  fields,  slaves  in  the 
kitchens,  slaves  in  the  factories,  slaves  in 
the  quarries,  slaves  in  the  mines,  slaves 
building  the  public  works,  slaves  in  all  places 
where  "  naked  human  strength"  is  required. 
All  work,  high  and  low,  from  the  teachers 
to  the  menials,  is  done  by  slaves.* 

But  do  not  the  Greeks  love  freedom  ?  we 
ask.  Yes,  freedom  for  the  Greek ;  he  alone 
is  a  man,  he  alone  is  a  citizen.  "  The 
title  of  citizen,"  Aristotle  hath  said, 
"  belongs  only  to  those  who  need  not  work 
to  live."  The  citizen  must  occupy  himself 
only  with  the  State.  To  do  this  he  must 
have  leisure,  he  must  attend  the  court,  and 
hear  the  harangues  and  take  part  in  the 
discussions  of  the  market  places.  Work  is 
a  hindrance  to  life.  It  is  to  be  despised ; 

*  Smith's  History  of  Greece. 


Have  the  Poor  Grrown  Poorer  f         39 

it  is  servile ;  it  degrades  men ;  it  makes  them 
incapable  of  virtue ;  it  blunts  the  intelligence. 
Politics  and  war  and  leisure  are  for  the  free- 
man ;  drudgery,  toil,  work  are  for  the 
contemptible  slave.  The  Athenian  shows 
no  more  sympathy  for  the  sufferings  of  his 
slaves  than  a  driver  feels  for  the  wheels  of 
his  cart. 

We  inquire  still  further  and  we  learn 
that  the  slaves,  although  they  do  all 
the  work,  are  excluded  from  every  benefit 
to  be  derived  from  public  institutions,  while 
the  citizens  fatten  on  the  public  revenues. 
Every  citizen  has  ^himself  paid  by  the 
government  if  possible.  The  orators  have 
themselves  paid  for  speaking  and  the  people 
for  hearing.  The  judges  do  not  allow  them- 
selves to  be  forgotten,  either.  As  many  as 
ten  ambassadors  are  accredited  to  each 
power  at  the  same  time.  There  are  physicans 
and  poets  maintained  at  the  public  expense  ; 
public  copyists  and  criers  are  fed  and  lodged 
by  the  State.  In  short,  the  multitude  of 
salaried  officers  is  so  great  that  laws  have  to 
been  forced  against  plurality  of  officers — this 
leprosy  of  Commonwealths.  "  The  right  of 
laziness,"  as  it  has  been  called;  the  pride  of 
the  unoccupied  man,  this  is  the  virtue  to 
which  the  Athenian  aspires. 

In  the  Politics  of  Aristotle  we  are  shown 
these  remarkable  words :  "  The  science  of 
the  master  reduces  itself  to  knowing  how  to 
make  use  of  his  slave."  "It  is  nature  herself, 
who  has  created  slavery.  Animals  are  divid- 
ed into  males  and  females.  The  male  is  more 
perfect;  he  commands.  The  female  is  less 
complete ;  she  obeys.  Does  there  then  exist 
after  all,  so  great  a  difference  between  the 
slave  and  the  beast  ?  Their  services  resemble 
each  other ;  it  is  by  the  body  alone  that  they 


40  The  Social  Question. 

are  useful  to  us.  Let  us,  then,  conclude 
from  these  principles  that  nature  creates 
some  men  for  liberty  others  for  slavery  ;  that 
it  is  useful  and  just  that  the  slave  should 
obey." 

We  hear  most  excellent  discourse  on  Greek 
philosophy  which  speaks  in  beautiful  terms 
about  the  human  soul,  its  faculties,  its  vir- 
tues, but  we  are  amazed  to  observe  that 
only  the  soul  of  the  free  Greek  citizen  is 
meant — the  laborer  is  excluded !  We  inquire 
of  the  law — the  law  shows  no  more  humanity 
than  does  philosophy.  Slaves  are  sold,  lent, 
given  and  bequeathed  like  cattle.  They  can 
neither  acquire  or  possess.  If  married,  the 
master  may  take  away  their  wives.  If  the 
slave  has  children,  they  are  the  property  of 
the  master.  The  fate  of  the  slave,  we  are 
told,  was  in  Athens  much  less  harsh  than  in 
any  other  Grecian  state,  and  yet  even  in 
Athens  he  was  brutally  abused  on  the  slight- 
est pretext.  His  life  was  not  his  own.  he 
was  the  sport  of  his  master.  Such  was  the 
condition  of  the  laborer  in  Greece. 

We  come  down  through  the  great  Roman 
world  along  the  tide  of  years  and  see  the 
same  social  state  of  the  laborer  taking  its 
course  to  lower  levels  on  these  principles  of 
slavery.  The  workman  is  still  likened  to  a 
beast — his  life,  should  he  be  murdered,  is 
regarded  by  the  law  as  of  equal  value  with 
that  of  an  ox  or  a  horse  ;  at  day  bound  to  the 
roughest  labor,  at  night  shut  up  in  subter- 
ranean caverns  damp  and  close.  The  slave 
door-keeper  chained  to  the  door,  is  sold  with 
the  house,  forming  in  a  way  part  of  the 
wall.* 

Emperors  and  even  women  treat  them  with 
barbarous  cruelty  at  every  change  of  whim. 
*  Suetonius.  De  Claris.  ILL 


Have  the  Poor  Crrown  Poorer.         41 

Cato  sells  his  old  slaves  weakened  by  age, 
at  a  low  price,  like  worn  out  furniture,  or  if 
unable  to  drive  a  bargain  he  orders  them 
away,  caring  little  for  their  fate.* 
-  There  is  no  pity  for  those  who  must  work : 
they  are  despised,  they  count  for  naught — 
they  make  good  sport,  and  the  barbarity  of 
the  Roman  world  must  needs  gratify  itself 
with,  the  blood  of  its  slaves  in  the  wantonness 
of  the  gladiatorial  shows.  The  fondest  amuse- 
ment of  the  Romans — women  as  well  as 
men — is  to  see  men,  the  slaves,  their  laborers, 
fight  with  beast  or  man  in  the  arena.  No  so- 
lemnity inspires  the  Roman  with  more  inter- 
est. Tired  of  idleness,  though  he  despises 
work,  he  has  tens  to  the  amphitheatre  ;  is  he 
melancholy  ? — he  wants  to  see  men  killed  as 
a  diversion. 

"  Oh,  what  a  society  was  this  of  Rome  ! 
tolerating  orgies  where  the  blood  of  slaves 
mingled  with  the  wine  of  their  flower-crowned 
masters,  where  mortal  combats  alternated 
with  impure  pantomime,  where  the  guests 
were  offered  in  turn  the  grimaces  of  the  actors, 
the  carnage  of  gladiators  and  the  kisses  of 
courtesans — where,  indeed,  the  most  mon- 
strous cruelty  was  allied  with  the  most  shame- 
less libertinism  !  "f 

The  gloom  of  this  picture  of  pagan  egoism 
darkens  gradually  into  the  blackness  of 
extinction.  Pericles  institutes  the  Theorika, 
the  distribution  of  money  to  the  citizens  out 
of  the  public  treasury  to  feed  a  seditious, 
lazy,  hungry  populace,  and  to  buy  tickets  to 
the  theater  for  them.  It  becomes  the  policy 
of  demagogues  ever  thereafter  to  give  great 
public  banquets  and  shows,  in  order  to  still 
rebellious  outbreaks.  Thus  came  inevitably 

*  Plutarch  (On  Cato.( 

t  Schmidt,  Social  Results  of  Early  Christianity. 


42  The  Social  Question. 

the  dissolution  of  these  mighty  empires  of 
old — thus  Greece  was  swept  into  the  orbit  of 
the  Roman  world,  her  light  extinguished; 
thus  the  brilliancy  of  the  Roman  constella- 
tion, like  the  lost  Pleiad,  faded  forever  from" 
sight. 

The  gulf  between  the  then  and  now  is 
broadened  into  an  impassable  ocean.  Then 
the  problem  was  Slavery — now  it  is  Liberty. 
Then  the  State  recognized  only  the  citizen 
and  made  use  of  his  body  and  mind  for  her 
political  deeds ;  to-day  the  man  is  to  be  con- 
sidered before  the  citizen,  and  individual 
worth  is  asserting  itself  as  the  only  true 
standard  of  political  and  social  rank. 

They  lived  by  conquest,  i.  e.,  by  the  labor 
of  others  ;  we  live  by  industries  and  com- 
merce, i.  e.,  by  our  own  labor.  Then  labor 
was  identified  with  ignominy ;  to  day  it  is 
the  badge  of  true  manhood  and  womanhood. 
Then  the  problem  of  the  public  men  was  to 
find  out  how  to  enrich  the  people,  not  by 
labor  and  manufacture,  but  with  the  rev- 
enues of  the  State  ;  to-day  the  problem  is, 
what  need  in  industry  can  we  create,  and 
how  shall  every  man  best  serve  his  country 
by  some  useful  toil.  Then  no  one  dreamed 
of  the  resources  that  could  be  found  in  labor, 
and  the  demon  Idleness  inserted  his  talons 
in  the  breast  of  the  State  and  tore  out  her 
vitals ;  to-day  no  one  dreams  of  living  in 
idleness,  from  the  "  maid-servant  that  is  be- 
hind the  mill  to  the  chief  magistrate  that 
sitteth  on  his  throne."  Then  the  soul  was 
merely  the  fanciful  theme  of  the  speculations 
of  the  philosophers;  to-day  it  is  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  greatness  and  the  divineness  of  the 
human  soul  that  lifts  all  men  into  the  plane 
of  brotherhood  and  becomes  the  lofty  principle 
of  all  genuine  social  advancement.  Thus  is 


.    Have  the  Poor  Grrown  Poorer.          43 

our  civilization  vindicated  from  this  terrible 
unhistorical  charge  that  the  poor  are  poorer 
than  ever. 

By  this  contrast  with  the  past  do  we  verify 
the  claim  that  "  the  modern  free  system  of 
industry  offers  to  every  living  human  being 
chances  of  happiness  indescribably  in  excess 
of  what  former  generations  have  possessed."* 
If  there  be  shades  of  blackness,  the  darkness 
in  which  the  laborers  of  the  classic  lands  of 
Greece  and  Rome  dwelt,  was  perhaps  some- 
what less  black  than  that  of  Egypt.  By  con- 
trast with  them  we  live  in  the  broad  light  of 
day,  dimmed  only  by  the  shadows  of  the 
passing  clouds. 

It  was  with  the  rise  of  the  Judaic  influ- 
ences that  the  sun  of  freedom  sent  forth  his 
rays  upon  the  laborer  in  pagan  lands  and 
brightened  his  dark  career.  The  study  of 
that  influence  will  give  us  assurance  that 
there  is  a  providential  thread  that  runs 
through  the  web  of  history  and  give  us  cause 
to  hope  that  "  some  day  there  will  be  no  more 
pariahs  at  the  banquet  of  life." 

*  W.  G.  Simmer,  Social  Classes. 


44  The  Social  Question. 


DISCOURSE  V. 

HOW      DTD       MOSES      SOLVE      THE      SOCIAL 
PROBLEM  ? 

DISRAELI  in  his  poetical  novel.  Tan- 
cred,  sends  out  a  young  English  lord  to 
search  the  world  for  some  remedy  for 
the  social  and  political  evils  of  Europe. 
The  young  Englishman  is  lured  by  quaint 
dreams  and  fancies  to  the  far-away  scenes 
of  Asiatic  lands.  After  many  days  he  wan^ 
ders  among  the  wild  ranges  of  granite  mount- 
ains of  Arabia.  At  midnight  he  stands  alone 
in  that  small,  rock-bound  plane  far  up  the 
steep  of  Mt.  Sinai,  the  traditional  scene  of  the 
greatest  event  of  time,  the  promulgation  of 
the  Decalogue.  Here  upon  the  sacred  soil,  the 
solitary  pilgrim  kneels  and  is  lost  in  earnest 
meditation  and  prayer.  At  last,  lifting  his 
agitated  face  to  peer  into  the  starry  vault 
overhead,  he  clasps  his  hands  in  the  anguish 
of  devotion  and  cries :  "  O  Lord,  God  of  Is- 
rael, Creator  of  the  universe,  ineffable  Jeho- 
vah !  I  come  to  thine  ancient  Arabian  altars 
to  pour  forth  the  heart  of  tortured  Europe. 
Why  art  thou  silent  ?  Why  no  longer  do 
the  messengers  of  thy  renovating  will  de- 
scend on  earth  ?  Faith  fades  and  duty  dies. 
A  profound  melancholy  has  fallen  on  the 
spirit  of  man.  The  priest  doubts,  the  mon- 
arch can  not  rule,  the  multitude  moans  and 
toils  and  calls  in  its  frenzy  on  unknown 
gods.  If  prophets  may  not  arise  again  to 
herald  hope,  at  least,  of  all  the  starry  mes- 
sengers that  guard  thy  throne  let  one  appear 


How  did  Moses  Solve  the  Social  Problem.  45 

to  save  thy  creatures  from  a  terrible  de- 
spair." 

A  dimness  suffuses  the  stars  of  Arabia. 
The  kneeling  pilgrim  sinks  upon  the  earth 
senseless  and  in  a  trance,  and  to  him  there 
appears  a  form,  with  shape  human,  but  vast  as 
the  surrounding  hills.  On  his  lofty  forehead 
glitters  a  star  that  throws  a  solemn  radiance 
on  the  repose  of  his  majestic  features ; 
thought,  rather  than  melancholy  speaks  from 
the  pensive  passion  ot  his  eye  as  gently  he  ut- 
ters these  words  of  wisdom :  "Power  is  neither 
the  sceptre  nor  the  sword,  for  these  pass 
away  —but  ideas  which  are  divine.  The  equal- 
ity of  man  can  only  be  acomplished  by  the 
sovereignty  of  God.  The  longing  for  frater- 
nity can  never  be  satisfied  but  under  the  sway 
oi  a  common  Father.  In  the  increased  dis- 
tance be  ween  God  and  man  have  grown  up 
all  those  developments  that  have  made  life 
mournful.  Cease,  then,  to  seek  in  a  vain  phil- 
osophy the  solution  of  the  social  problem  that 
vexes  you.  Announce  the  sublime  and  solac- 
ing doctrine  of  theocratic  equality." 

What  does  this  weird,  poetic  figure  mean  ? 
What  is  the  import  of  this  message  ?  It 
means  that  to  escape  the  "  divine  despair," 
"which  at  the  sight  of  the  misery  that  ingulfs 
the  masses  is  falling  with  the  blight  of  melan- 
choly upon  the  spirits  of  earnest,  thoughtful, 
feeling  men,  we  must  break  away  from  the 
toils  and  fetters  of  modern  error,  and  as  the 
tortured  child  hastens  to  the  arms  of  its 
mother,  so  we  must  hasten  back  to  Judea  the 
mother  of  our  civilization,  in  her  bosom  to 
find  solace  and  comfort  and  rest.  It  means 
that  we  must  go  back  to  the  cradle  of  the 
world  where  wisdom  first  spake,  and  learn 
again  the  message  of  truth  that  for  all  times 
and  unto  all  generations  was  proclaimed  by 


46  The  Social  Question. 

the  Hebrews  of  old.  It  means  that  the 
hotly  contested  social  questions  of  our  civili- 
sation are  to  be  settled  neither  according  to 
the  ideas  of  the  capitalist  nor  those  of  the 
laborer,  neither  according  to  those  of  the 
socialist,  the  communist,  the  anarchist  or 
the  nihilist,  but  simply  and  only  according 
to  the  eternal  laws  of  morality,  which  were 
pronounced  at  Sinai.  This  is  the  truth 
which  it  is  our  immediate,  ail-important  duty 
to  loudly  proclaim  and  speedily  establish, 
that  modern  political  economy  and  social 
science  can  teach  no  new  guiding  principles 
which  are  not  already  embraced  in  the 
simple  lessons  of  Judaism. 

We  turn,  then,  with  eagerness  to  a  study 
of  the  social  conditions  of  the  Hebrews. 
Our  minds  are  still  filled  with  the  woful 
pictures  of  artizan  life  in  the  monarchies  of 
the  Orient,  of  Egypt,  pagan  Greece  and 
Rome.  The  sad  spectacles  of  slavery,  misery, 
brutality  and  woe  still  depress  us.  But  lo, 
the  scenes  that  present  themselves,  as  we 
look  out  in  imagination  upon  the  busy  life 
of  Palestine  under  the  sway  of  the  Mosaic 
law  are  so  utterly  different,  so  marvelously 
changed  for  the  better  that,  like  one  who 
comes  from  the  darkness  suddenly  into  the 
bright  light,  we  are  dazzled  and  almost  over- 
whelmed by  the  contrast.  Indeed,  it  is 
truly  a  transformation  as  of  night  into  day. 
The  great  cloud  of  misery  is  lifted  from 
humanity.  Slavery  fades  away — its  dark- 
ness is  dispelled,  for  freedom  bursts  into  the 
skies  effulgent  as  the  new-born  sun  of  day. 
Liberty  called  out  to  a  horde  of  slaves, 
fainting  under  the  burdens  and  crouching 
under  the  lash  of  Egypt ;  they  hushed  their 
moaning,  hearkened  to  her  call  and  gladly 
she  led  them  forth  from  the  House  of  Bon- 


Sow  did  Moses  Solve  the  Social  Problem  ?  47 

dage.  Then  for  the  first  time  the  world  saw 
a  nation  of  free  men,  all  alike  acknowledged 
to  be  men  with  heavenly  capacities  created 
in  the  image  of  God  all  alike  inspired  by  the 
same  lofty  purpose  of  life  to  develox)  into 
the  spiritual  likeness  of  the  Creator. 

Here  were  no  casts.  Mark  this  startling 
transition.  It  utterly  changes  the  social  con- 
ditions of  the  world.  Grandly  and  majesti- 
cally Moses  sweeps  above  the  heartless  de- 
gradation of  man  by  man  which  every  where 
prevails,  and  lifts  all  men  to  the  heights  of 
equality — theocratic  equality,  wherein  all 
are  alike  the  children  of  one  God,  all  are 
members  of  the  noblest  rank,  the  only  rank 
— a  priest  people.  Moses  based  his  govern- 
ment upon  religion,  and  laid  the  foundation 
of  all  virtues  in  the  family.  We  know  that 
the  evils  which  came  upon  the  Jewish  people 
came  only  through  a  falling  away  from  the 
strict  code  of  his  politics  and  morality. 

We  pass  at  once  to  ask  how  Moses,  with 
his  incomparable  genius  and  matchless  states- 
manship, solved  those  special  phases  of  the 
social  question  which  so  agitate  the  world 
to-day — those  that  arise  out  of  the  contests 
of  men  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 

In  the  Hebrew  Commonwealth  we  find, 
for  the  first  time  in  history,  conditions  that 
thoroughly  interest  us  because  of  their 
similarity  to  our  own.  The  conditions  that 
prevailed  in  the  pagan  world  were  so  en- 
tirely different  from  ours  that  the  social 
question,  in  the  forms  that  most  concern  us, 
could  hardly  have  been  said  to  exist.  But 
in  the  Mosaic  legislation  all  is  changed. 
Here  is  free  labor  ;  every  man  must  work, 
as  is  the  case  with  us.  Here  is  perfect 
freedom  to  choose  your  own  calling  in  life, 
as  with  us ;  here  is  the  wage  system  by 


48  The  Social  Question. 

which  each  one  is  to  get  the  fruits  of  his  toil, 
as  with  us ;  here  is  the  right  of  private  pos- 
session maintained,  as  with  us  ;  here  is 
property  in  land  and  the  system  of  in- 
heritance, as  with  us.  Almost  the  whole 
list  of  our  social  questions  is  here,  for  they 
all  come  naturally  with  the  abolition  of 
slavery. 

The  principles  upon  which  the  Mosaic 
enactments  were  based  were  these  :  Israel 
was  himself  a  slave  in  Egypt,  and  there 
suffered  grievous  oppression  and  severity 
from  which  divine  mercy  has  delivered  him. 
Israel,  therefore,  should  not  similarly  oppress 
those  who  are  under  his  authority,  or 
in  adverse  circumstances,  but  should  rather 
show  them  mercy  and  kindness.  *  Israel, 
since  his  deliverance  from  Egypt,  has  en- 
tered the  service  of  God.  The  servant  of 
God  ought  not  to  become  the  servant  of  men. 
Perpetual  and  real  servitude  can  not,  there- 
fore, exist  among  Israelites,  for  that  would 
be  a  virtual  denial  of  God.  f 

And  so,  although  you  find  slaves  often 
spoken  of  in  the  Bible,  yet  if  you  study  the 
condition  of  the  few  so-called  slaves  among 
the  Hebrews,  you  will  find  that  it  had  none 
of  the  brutal  or  degrading  characteristics  of 
the  slaves  among  all  other  peoples.  In  fact 
it  was  simply  that  of  hired  servants  among 
us.  This  service  could  never  be  for  longer 
than  six  years.  The  seventh  year  and  the 
year  of  Jubilee  set  all  slaves  free.  A  man 
if  needy,  could  bind  himself  to  such  service 
of  slavery  but  he  could  also  buy  his  freedom. 
Many  crimes  were  judicially  punished  by 
condemning  the  culprit  to  slavery,  some- 
what after  the  principle  of  modern  convict 

*Ex.  xxii.    20;  xxiii.    9.   Dent.  v.  14-15  ;    xv.    15; 
xviii,12;xxiv.  18-22. 

t  Lev.  xxx.  42;  xxv.  13. 


How  did  Moses  Solve  the  Social  Problem  ?  49 

labor.  But  the  sting  of  degradation  and 
ignominy  was  almost  taken  from  the  con- 
ditions of  slavery  by  reason  of  the  total  rev- 
olution in  sentiment,  that  Moses  wrought 
in  that  he  caused  work  to  be  held  in  the 
highest  respect  and  dignity.  In  the  Hebrew 
Commonwealth  not  only  the  hirelings  or 
slaves,  but  all  the  people  are  at  work.  The 
husband  must  work  to  support  wife  and 
children.  The  wife  looks  faithfully  to  her 
household  and  the  praises  of  her  domesticity 
are  sung  in  the  matchless  strains  of  the 
Proverbs.*  The  children  work  to  maintain 
their  aged  parents. f 

It  is  only  over  the  labor  of  the  slave  that 
the  master  has  control ;  unlike  the  master  in 
all  other  lands  he  has  no  control  over  the 
life  or  property,  none  over  the  wife  and 
children  of  his  slave.  Nay,  he  is  answerable 
to  the  law  for  the  slave's  proper  care  and 
treatment.  He  is  not  even  allowed  to  send 
him  off  empty-handed  at  the  end  of  his 
period  of  service,  but  must  give  him  a 
present  of  sheep,  grain  and  wine.J  The 
slave  is  privileged  to  participate  in  various 
religious  exercises,  the  Sabbath  is  insti- 
tuted with  special  reference  to  him ;  he  is 
treated  with  clemeiicy,§  often  with  kind- 

*  Prov.  ch.  xxxi.  t  Jalkut  I.  §  850. 

t  Deut.  xv.  13,  14. 

§  The  normal  day  of  labor  is  fixed  in  the  Jewish  law 
at  twelve  hours,  from  which  two  hours  were  remitted 
in  the  course  of  the  day  for  meals  and  the  recital  of  the 
prescribed  prayers,  the  Shemaand  Tefillah,  thus  leaving 
ten  hours  for  work.  (B.  Mez.  vn.  I  ;  Chos.  Mishpat, 
Chap.  339,  1.)  Workmen  could  require  better  condi- 
tions but  not  a  decrease  in  the  number  of  hours,  and  a 
raise  in  wages  could  not  secure  for  employer  increased 
time  but  only  better  quality  of  work.  (Chas.  Mispp. 
332,  5.)  For  further  elucidation  of  this  now  much  con- 
tested matter  see,  Arbeit  und  Lolin  nach  Biblisch.  Tal- 
mudischern  Gesetze"  by  J.  Nobel,  in  Judische Presse, 
Berlin,  1886. 


50  The  Social  Question. 

ness  and  consideration  due  to  a  member  of 
the  family.  Is  this  slavery  ?  Assuredly  by 
contrast  with  the  slavery  of  all  other  na- 
tions there  was  no  such  a  thing  as  slavery 
in  Judea.* 

"Liberty  was  always  the  ultimate  idea 
of  the  great  emancipator,  and  this  idea 
breathes  and  flames  in  all  his  laws  which 
touch  poverty.  Slavery  he  hated  beyond 
all  measure ;  he  was  enraged  against  it,  but 
he  could  not  destroy  it  altogether,  it  was 
too  deeply  rooted  in  the  life  of  that  hoary 
age,  and  he  had  to  content  himself  to 
ameliorate  by  law  the  condition  of  the 
slave,  to  facilitate  his  emancipation  and  to 
limit  the  period  of  service.  If,  however,  a 
slave  who  was  set  free  by  the  law,  refused 
to  leave  the  house  of  his  master,  then 
Moses  ordained  that  this  incorrigible  ser- 
vile scamp  should  be  nailed  by  the  ear  to 
the  doorposts  of  the  master's  house,  and 
after  this  degrading  exhibition  he  was 
condemned  to  servitude  for  life."f 

The  Jewish  nation  was  ever  noted  for 
industry,  energy,  strength,  ingenuity  and 
restless  activity.  Agriculture,  stock-rais- 
ing, and  handicrafts  were  the  main  oc- 
cupations. The  Mosaic  law  promoted 
and  protected  them.  The  little  land  of 
Palestine  was  a  perfect  paradise,  planted 
and  cultivated  to  the  very  mountain  sum- 
mits. From  Egypt  the  Hebrews  had 
learned  much  science  and  art.  Mechanical 
pursuits  were  held  in  high  favor. J  Indeed 
we  find  throughout  that  there,  as  among 
us,  all  occupations  were  pursued  by  the 
people,  and  work  was  loved  and  honored, 

*  Mielziner,  Slavery  among  the  Hebrews. 

t  Heinrich  Heine. 

|  Ps.  cxxviii.  2  ;  Prov.  vii.  6-8. 


How  did  Moses  Solve  the  Social  Problem?  51 

"  There  is  no  trade  which  the  world  can 
spare."  (KidduMn^  82,  2.)  "  When  a  man 
teaches  his  son  no  trade,  it  is  as  if  he  brought 
him  np  to  highway  robbery.'"  (Kiddushin 
29,  1.)  "  Only  he  who  tills  the  soil  will  be 
nourished  by  it " — (£.  Mezia,  77.)  "  Love 
work  ;  do  not  despise  it,  or  consider  yourself 
superior  to  it." — (Aboth  1,  10.)  "  Great  is 
work ;  for  it  honors  man :  elevates  and  en- 
riches him."  B.  Bathra,  110 ;  Aboth  de  H 
Nathan,  11.) 

Such  are  a  few  among  the  numerous  say- 
ings of  the  Rabbis  of  the  Talmud.  Their 
sayings  reflected  the  sentiments  of  the  people 
for  they  were  themselves  of  the  people  and 
they  practiced  as  they  preached.  More  than 
a  hundred  of  those  named  in  the  Talmud  be- 
sides their  rabbinical  functions  followed 
trades.  There  were  among  others,  tailors, 
shoemakers,  a  baker,  an  architect,  a  grave- 
digger,  a  fisher,  a  dyer,  a  carpenter,  etc. 
The  practical  rule  of  conduct  which  guided 
the  rabbis  of  old  was  pronounced  by  Rabban 
Gamaliel,  when  he  said  (Aboth.  II.  2)  :  "  Fair 
is  the  study  of  the  law  if  accompanied  by  a 
worldly  occupation  for  the  union  of  these 
two  annihilates  sin." 

Consider  well  these  facts  now  cited,  and 
you  will  know  why  that  cry  of  woe  which 
is  ringing  in  our  ears  to-day  was  never  heard 
in  Judea  ;  why  the  clamorous  outbreaks  of 
the  laborers  which  startle  us  from  our  dreams 
of  safety  and  peace  were  never  known  there. 
You  may  search  up  and  down  through  the 
records  of  Jewish  history  and  will  never  find 
any  revolts  of  slaves  such  as  those  which  af- 
flicted Rome  and  under  Spartacus  threaten- 
ed the  national  safety,  nor  any  uprisings 
like  those  of  the  Plebeians  of  Rome,  the 
Demoi  of  Athens,  or  the  Helots  in  Sparta ; 


52  The  Social  Question. 

no  wild  scenes  like  those  of  the  Paris  Com- 
mune ;  no  processions  of  hungry  men,  women 
and  children  crying  for  bread  like  those  that 
are  seen  in  London  and  Chicago  in  our  day. 
Moses  had  forestalled  the  possibility  of  such 
ever  arising.  There  was  on  the  one  hand, 
such  a  respect  for  work  and  such  a  wide  dif- 
fusion of  labor  ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  such 
a  wonderful  system  of  practical  charity, 
such  complete  and  excellent  provision  for 
the  needy,  that  no  idle  class,  no  proletarians 
ever  could  exist.  Mark  the  miracle  !  Pau- 
perism, that  spectre  of  our  century,  never 
haunted  the  ancient  land  of  our  forefathers. 
Tramps  were  not  known  there. 

Private  property  in  land  was  allowed  in 
Palestine,  but  it  could  never  be  entirely 
alienated  away,  for  in  the  Jubilee  year  all 
property  reverted  to  the  original  owner.* 
Thus  the  undue  accumulation  of  wealth  in 
the  hands  of  the  few  in  the  face  of  the  utter 
poverty  of  the  masses  could  not  occur,  for 
every  man  called  a  piece  of  land  his  own. 

*See  Lev.  xxv.  13,  44.  The  institution  of  the  Jubilee 
which  never  went  into  practical  operation  as  far  as  re- 
cords show,  and  which  was  certainly  not  given  as  a  law 
for  all  nations,  has,  strangely  enough,  been  put  forward 
as  an  argument  for  the  "  nationalization  of  land," 
while  in  fact  it  was  an  iron-clad  law  of  entail  and  in- 
sisted on  private  ownership  in  land.  See  The  Forum 
Nov.  1887.  "Christianity  and  Communism,"  by  Rev.  Dr. 
Yan  Dyke,  Jr. 

"  Instead  of  wrestling  with  the  impossible,  instead 
of  inconsiderately  decreeing  the  abolition  of  property, 
Moses  only  attempted  its  moralization ;  he  endeavored 
to  bring  property  in  harmony  with  morality,  with  the 
true  law  of  reason,  and  this  he  accomplished,  by 
the  introduction  of  the  year  of  jubilee,  in  which 
alienated  land  that  was  inherited,  which,  with  an  agri- 
cultural people,  constituted  true  property,  fell  back  to 
the  original  owner,  regardless  of  the  manner  in  which 
it  had  been  disposed  of.  This  institution  forms  the 
most  decided  contrast  to  that  *  outlawry'  with  the 
Romans,  where,  after  the  lapse  of  a  certain  time,  the 
actual  possessor  of  a  property  could  not  be  compelled 
by  the  legitimate  owner  to  restore  the  property  if  he 
could  not  bring  evidence  to  show  that  he  had  demanded 


How  did  Moses  Solve  the  Social  Prollem  ?  58 

Thus  Moses  solved  the  social  question. 
Well  may  the  world  still  stand  entranced 
before  the  genius  of  our  great  law-giver. 
Well  may  we  go  back  and  sit  at  his  feet 
and  learn  the  lessons  that  shall  solve  our 
vexing  and  harassing  difficulties.  I  do  not 
say  that  we  should  adopt  the  Mosaic  in- 
stitutions bodily.  That  would  be  an  im- 
possibility. In  some  respects  it  would  be  a 
retrogression.  Slavery  however  modified 
would  have  to  be  restored.  "  We  should 
have  to  give  up  all  the  advantages  gained 
through  the  marvelous  advance  secured  in 
the  comforts  and  refinements  of  life,  through 
the  dominion  over  the  forces  of  nature, 
through  the  wondrous  facility  in  intercom- 
munications and  transportation  and  espe- 
cially through  the  protection  against  disease, 
famine,  and  pestilence  and  all  the  thousand 
and  one  appliances  and  contrivances  physi- 
cal, chemical  and  mechanical  now  benefit- 
ing the  poor,  and  elevating  their  material 
condition  in  a  manner  never  known  hitherto 
in  the  history  of  mankind.  The  world 
has  changed.  There  are  new  factors  in 
life  unknown  in  Moses'  day.  His  codes 
were  adapted  to  a  peculiar  people,  homo- 
geneous in  character,  living  under  cer- 
tain conditions  and  environments  which 

restitution  in  due  legal  form.  This  last  condition  left 
the  field  open  to  every  possible  fraud,  especially  in  a 
state  where  despotism  and  jurisprudence  were  in  bloom 
and  where  the  unlawful  possessor  had  in  his  power  all 
the  means  of  intimidation  especially  when  confronted 
by  the  poor  man  who  could  not  afford  the  expenses 
which  a  contest  involved.  The  Roman  was  soldier  and 
lawyer  at  the  same  time  and  he  knew  how  to  defend 
with  his  glib  tongue  the  property  taken  from  others, 
often  with  the  sword.  Only  a  nation  of  robbers  and 
casuists  could  in  vent  the  laws  of  proscription  and  limit- 
ation and  to  consecrate  them  in  that  execrable  book 
which  might  be  called  the  Bible  of  the  devil,  the  code 
of  Koman  civil  \aw."—Heinrich  Heine. 


54  The  Social  Question. 

probably  do  not  now  exist  in  exactly  the 
same  order  anywhere.  That  would  be  a  very 
narrow  policy,  indeed,  that  would  hamper 
the  world  by  bending  it  within  the  iron 
bands  of  any  set  of  ancient  institutions,  how- 
ever perfect  they  were  in  their  day.  But 
this  we  do  aver  ;  that  what  Lord  Beacons- 
field  from  his  political  eminence  saw  as  with 
his  mental  vision  he  swept  the  whole  broad 
range  of  our  sociai  conditions,  is  the  solemn 
truth  and  stands  at  this  moment  the  pro- 
found conviction  of  every  man  of  earnest 
thought.  I  mean  that  only  by  those  eternal 
principles  of  justice  which  guided  Moses  in 
his  successful  solutions  of  the  problems  of 
his  time,  can  we  hope  to  solve  the  problems 
of  our  time.  We  can  not  use  his  statutes, 
perhaps,  but  their  aim  and  motive  we  must 
adopt. 

And  this  lesson  above  all  must  we  learn 
from  him  that  nothing  good  can  be  accom- 
plished by  sudden  revolution  and  by  violence. 
Moses  was  a  social  reformer,  and  for  success 
he  has  no  peer  in  the  lists.  Observe  well 
his  method.  He  so  legislated  as  to  abolish 
slavery ;  out  of  a  degraded  populace  dragged 
from  the  slums  of  Egypt  and  saturated  with 
the  vices,  the  errors  and  superstitions  of 
that  land,  by  patient  training  and  education, 
he  made  a  new  nation  and  gave  us  the  pat- 
tern of  the  most  successful  social  system  the 
world  has  ever  known.  This  he  did  not 
accomplish  by  mad  radical  revolution,  by 
tearing  down,  abolishing  and  destroying,  but 
by  taking  the  materials  as  he  found  them, 
the  circumstances  as  they  existed,  and  shap- 
ing them  by  the  might  of  his  heavenly  in- 
tellect and  by  the  strength  of  his  marvelous 
executive  power,  shaping  them  slowly  but 
positively  to  the  ends  of  the  perfect  justice 
of  God. 


The  Social  Chaos  of  the  Dark  Ages.     55 


DISCOURSE  VI. 

THE  SOCIAL  CHAOS  OF  THE  DARK  AGES. 

BACK  through  the  highways  and  byways 
of  the  past  we  have  wandered  together  in 
imagination,  by  the  guides  of  history,  in 
order  that  we  might  learn  from  the  exper- 
iences of  men  the  wisdom  that  shall  aid  us 
in  the  present. 

We  have  studied  the  condition  of  the 
laborers  in  the  world's  brightest  eras,  in  the 
ancient  monarchies,  in  Egypt  and  the  classic 
lands  of  Greece  and  Rome.  Let  us  note 
well  the  scenes  we  have  beheld,  wretched, 
pitiable,  mournful  throughout;  let  them  serve 
as  a  constant  reminder ;  let  this  picture  of 
the  woful  past  stand  in  contrast  with  the 
general  status  of  the  honest  free  laborer  of 
to-day,  and  thus  shall  we  best  banish  the 
discontent  that  consumes  our  lives,  thus  once 
for  all  shall  stand  denounced  the  falsehood 
so  unblushingly  asserted  in  the  face  of  the 
truth  by  all  the  social  agitators  of  the  day, 
the  charge  that  the  poor  are  poorer  now  than 
they  ever  were  hitherto.  One  word  gives 
the  lie  to  this  charge ;  one  bitter,  burning 
word  which  epitomizes  and  vividly  portrays 
the  horror,  the  misery,  and  woe,  barely 
conceivable  to  us  in  our  bettered  circum- 
stances, of  those  myriads  of  men  and  women 
who  in  the  drearjr  ages  past  labored  on  earth 
only  to  perish  in  despair.  That  word  is 
Slavery. 


56  The  Social  Question. 

The  whole  Orient,  Africa,  with  monu- 
mental Egypt,  all  the  Levant,  is  enshrouded 
in  the  densest  moral  darkness  upon  all  that 
appertains  to  the  just  conditions  and  rights 
of  the  laborer. 

At  last !  at  last  !  we  see  the  sun  of.  Free- 
dom rise  over  the  mountains  of  Arabia 
and  cast  his  beams  athwart  the  hills  and 
vales  of  the  little  land  of  Palestine.  There 
under  his  fructifying  influence  grows  up  the 
commonwealth  of  Moses  and  the  first  and 
only  social  system  that  was  developed 
throughout,  on  the  lines  of  the  eternal  justice 
of  the  moral  law.  Here  under  the  heat  of 
this  sun  of  freedom,  the  chains  melt  from 
the  wrists  of  the  bondsmen,  arid  the 
world  for  the  first  time  sees  a  nation  of 
freemen.  Here  for  the  first  time  we  find 
social  conditions  that  run  parallel  to  our 
own.  Here  is  free  labor — every  man  at 
work.  Here  is  the  freedom  to  choose  your 
own  calling  in  life,  no  castes  or  guilds  ;  here 
is  the  wage  system  to  secure  to  every  one 
the  fruits  of  his  toil ;  here  is  the  right  of 
private  property  and  individual  possession  in 
land  maintained  and  a  complete  system  of 
inheritance  upheld. 

We  see  how  the  incomparable  genius  and 
unrivaled  statesmanship  of  Moses  solved  the 
social  difficulties  of  his  day  in  such  a  marvel- 
ous manner  that  never  throughout  the 
course  of  Jewish  history  do  we  hear  of  upris- 
ings and  revolts  of  the  people  such  as  afflict 
all  other  lands  and  that  to-day  threaten  the 
safety  of  all  our  institutions  and  make  the 
social  question  so  abnormally  prominent. 

"  Such  a  thing  as  this,"  said  the  great 
German  poet,  Herder,  contemplating  th 
achievements  of  Moses  "is  not  a  mere 


The  Social  Chaos  of  the  Dark  Ages.     57 

figment  of  the  imagination,  such  a  his- 
tory and  all  that  attaches  to  it  and  depends 
upon  it,  in  short  such  a  people  cannot  be  a 
fiction.  Its  guidance  of  the  world  is  the 
grandest  poem  of  the  ages."* 

We  are  in  possession  of  the  records 
to  show  that  the  Mosaic  system  was 
not  a  mere  ideal  Utopian  scheme.  It  was 
a  living  reality,  working  with  brilliant  results 
through  successive  generations.  Since  this 
is  so' ;  since  Moses  so  successfully  solved  the 
social  question  under  phases  so  similar  to 
ours,  why  is  it,  we  are  driven  to  ask,  why 
is  it  that  these  questions  recur  again,  and  why 
do  they  come  up  only  now  after  hundreds 
and  hundreds  of  years  ?  This  is  a  question 
of  the  profoundest  interest  and  of  the 
most  vital  importance  in  understand- 
ing the  problems  we  have  to  deal  with.  Let 
me  try  to  unravel  the  seeming  inconsistency. 
I  have  spoken  of  the  Sun  of  Freedom  rising 
over  Judea.  The  metaphor  is  a  true  one. 
The  results  of  modern  astronomy  teach  that 
when  you  turn  to  look  up  to  the  shining  orbs 
overhead,  the  flash  of  light  that  greets  your 
eye  comes,  an  aerial  messenger,  from  far,  far 
across  the  immeasurable  expanse  of  space, 
and  that  he  bears  to  you  the  report,  not  of 
this  moment's  or  even  of  this  day's  doings  far 
up  there  among  the  heavenly  hosts,  but  he 
has  come  out  of  the  remote  past;  he  has 
reached  you  after  traveling  hundreds  and 
hundreds  of  years,  his  wings  unwearied,  his 
flight  unslackened  in  speed,  and  the  history 
he  tells  is  older  than  the  records  of  men. 
Just  so  the  sunlight  of  freedom,  in  which 
we  bask,  of  whose  warmth  and  inspiration 

*  Study  of  Theology,  Letter  xii. 


58  The  Social  Question. 

we  boast  with  kindling  eye  and  ardent  speech 
has  come  to  us  from  far  across  the  expanse 
of  time,  and  it  took  hundreds  and  hundreds 
of  years  for  it  to  pierce  the  intervening  dark- 
ness before  it  could  finally  shine  in  upon  and 
brighten  our  lives. 

Let  me  illustrate  still  further.  The  atten- 
tion of  the  country  is  being  attracted  just  now 
by  the  speedy  growth  of  the  "  New  South,'' 
as  it  is  called.  Money,  brain  and  toil  are 
being  liberally  expended  in  developing  the 
newly  discovered  mineral  resources  of  the 
State  of  Alabama.  In  the  northern  counties 
of  that  and  neighboring  States,  towering 
mountains  rear  aloft  their  heads  in  majesty, 
as  if  to  hold  secret  converse  with  the  silent 
skies.  There  they  have  stood  in  mute  and 
solemn  grandeur  through  the  ages.  A  hun- 
dred years  arid  more,  civilized  men  have  pass- 
ed up  and  down  and  over  them,  and  deemed 
them  perhaps  only  impediments,  rude  bar- 
riers, that  must  be  tunneled  or  leveled  off  in 
order  to  make  a  way  for  traffic.  These  up^ 
land  hillsides  have  been  plowed  and  culti- 
vated, rich  stores  of  timber  have  been  cleared 
for  the  usesof  men;  but  who  ever  dreamed 
until  in  recent  days  that  those  sleeping  sum- 
mits were  nature's  roof,  under  which  lay 
garnered  those  treasures  whose  undiscovered 
limits  set  our  brains  to  work  building  air 
castles  of  material  progress,  and  weaving 
fantastic  dreams  of  the  possibilities  hidden 
in  the  future  ? 

Long  ages  ago,  ere  yet  these  hills  had  lifted 
up  their  heads  so  proudly  to  such  majestic 
stature,  the  sun  shining  upon  them  caused 
reedy  vegetation  to  sprout ;  season  after 
season,  year  after  year,  decade  after  decade, 
this  vegetation  germinated,  grew,  blossomed, 


>       The  Social  Chaos  of  the  Dark  Ages.     59 

yielded  seed,  withered,  died  and  was  buried 
where  it  fell.  Through  the  ages  great  mass- 
es of  this  vegetation,  thus  accumulated, 
sank  into  the  marshes,  and  were  covered  by 
the  shifting  sands;  the  sand  was  compacted 
into  rock,  and  the  vegetation  in  the  great 
laboratory  of  nature  transformed  into  coal. 
Then  came  the  great  upheavals  of  the  earth's 
surface  by  the  forces  dwelling  in  the  heart 
of  the  globe;  the  mountains  were  elevated 
and  their  treasures  made  accessible  to  man. 

As  thus  in  a  study  of  the  processes  of  na- 
ture we  are  able  to  "  rethink  the  thoughts  of 
the  Creator,  "  so,  too,  in  tracing  back  the 
history  of  civilization,  we  are  able  to  discern 
the  issue  and  motive  of  its  processes.  We 
are  now  able  to  see  that  it  needed  hundreds 
and  hundreds  of  years  before  the  mists  and 
vapors  of  the  slavish,  inhuman  degradation 
of  the  laborer  could  be  so  effectually  cleared 
away  that  the  sunlight  of  freedom  might  at 
last  shine  forth  in  its  perfect  effulgence.  We 
^re  now  able  to  see  that  after  light  had  reach- 
ed the  world  it  took  again  hundreds  and 
hundreds  of  years  before  in  the  minds  of 
men  the  buried  rubbish  of  error  and  corrup- 
tion became  transformed  into  the  treasures 
of  matured  virtue.  No  wonder,  then,  that 
in  the  ever-thickening  shadows  of  darkness 
men  fainted  and  faltered,  and  doubted  wheth- 
er ever  humanity  would  be  emancipated 
and  redeemed.  Are  there  not  those  who  still 
doubt  it,  and  declare  that  all  the  successive 
civilizations  are  but  like  meteor  flashes  that 
inevitably  go  out  in  the  utter  darkness  of 
oblivion  ? 

Byron  stood  on  the  Palatine  Hill,  whose 
very  soil  is  made  of  the  crumbled  bricks  of 
its  decayed  edifices;  he  looked  in  sadness 
upon  the  ruins  of  the  past  grandeur  of 


60  The  Social  Question. 

Rome,  and  musing  upon  the  lessons  of  his- 
tory he  thus  spoke  : 

There   is  the  moral  of  all  human  tales  ; 

'  Tis  but  the  same  rehearsal  of  the  past. 

First  Freedom  and  then  Glory.     When  that  fails 

Wealth,  vice,  corruption — barbarism  at  last. 

And  history  with  all  her  volumes  vast 

Hath  but  one  page." 

If  you  flit  lightly  across  the  broad  expanse 
of  the  great  ocean  of  events  upon  the  winds 
of  inquiry,  which  but  gently  touch  the  sur- 
face, you  will  reach  the  same  disheartening 
conclusion  here  pronounced  by  the  poet; 
but  dive  fearlessly  into  the  great  ocean  of 
history,  sound  its  utmost  depths,  search  them 
well,  and  beneath  you  will  find  hidden  the 
genuine  pearls  of  truth ;  you  will  see  that 
while  ruin  is  heaped  upon  ruin,  and  nations, 
governments,  religious  and  social  systems 
fall  to  pieces,  yet  one  generation  after  an- 
other, rising  on  the  wrecks  of  the  Past,  thus 
mounts  to  nobler  and  better  things. 

Assyria,  Media,  Persia,  Babylonia  and  arf- 
cient  Egypt  pass  away ;  but  that  which  is 
of  eternal  worth  in  their  achievements  can- 
not perish  ;  it  remains  to  the  world  ;  it  lives 
again,  refined  and  developed  in  the  life  of 
Judea.  But  Judea,  too,  falls.  Not  however, 
till  after  Alexander  the  Great  has  overrun 
the  East  in  conquest,  and  brought  into  con- 
flict the  civilizations  of  Europe  and  Asia  in 
that  contact  of  the  Greek  and  Hebrew,  out 
of  which  springs  the  new  civilization  which 
centers  in  ancient  Alexandria.  This,  too,  is 
overwhelmed,  but  yields  its  fruits  to  the 
world,  that  is,  to  Rome.  Then  comes  that 
great  struggle  on  the  battle-field  of  Europe, 
in  which  all  the  combined  results  of  human 
endeavor  in  the  past  are  arrayed  against 


The  Social  Chaos  of  the  Dark  Ages.     61 

Barbarism;  and  while  that  contest  is  waged 
the  Dark  Ages  prevail.  For  long  centuries  the 
darkness  reigns.  It  is  a  night  of  hideous  rev- 
elry, a  perfect  Walpurgis  Night,  the  witches' 
high  carnival.  Hastening  together  from  all 
quarters  of  the  globe,  in  all  shapes  and  forms, 
in  all  manner  of  costumes  and  hideous 
adornment,  the  evil  spirits,  in  that  supersti- 
tion of  the  Middle  Ages,  swarm  up  to  the 
summit  of  the  Brocken  Mountains,  and  there 
whirl  round  and  round  in  mad  dances  and 
wildly  reel  and  chase  about  in  drunken  or- 
gies. Such  is  the  scene  which  the  world 
presents  during  the  Dark  Ages.  Everything 
is  in  utter  confusion. 

"  Night, 

And  chaos,  ancestors  of  Nature,  hold 
Eternal  anarchy  amidst  the  noise 
Of  endless  wars." 

The  Germans,  tribe  after  tribe,  press  on- 
ward to  the  Roman  frontier  ;  the  Huns  push 
forward  from  northern  Asia  and  drive  before 
them  the  Slavonians  and  Gothics  and  pre- 
cipitate the  Visigoths  across  the  Danube  into 
the  heart  of  the  Roman  Empire.  The  Mo- 
hammedans sweep  onward  at  the  South. 
Wave  follows  wave  in  the  great  migration 
of  nations.  One  population  crowds  upon  and 
displaces  another.  Nothing  is  permanent, 
nothing  settled.  The  chaos  is  greatest  in 
Germany.  France  is  more  agitated  than 
Italy.  Thus  from  the  fifth  to  the  tenth  cen- 
tury, in  a  state  of  continuous  struggle  among 
themselves,  all  the  principles  and  the  forms 
of  political,  religious  and  social  organization 
known  to  the  world,  civilized  and  barbarian, 
exist  side  by  side  in  Europe. 

Here  is  the  primitive  individualism  of  the 
rude  barbarian,  his  inordinate  love  for  a 
selfish,  personal  independence,  for  activity 


62  The  Social  Question. 

without  labor;  alongside  of  this  the  auto- 
matic, apathetic,  well-drilled  soldierly  life  of 
the  old  Roman  cities.  Here  is  the  reign  of 
brute  force,  where  violence  is  king,  where 
lies  are  the  statutes  and  deceit  is  the  only 
principle  of  conduct ;  opposed  to  them  the 
Christian  Church,  with  its  meek  and  ardent 
devotees,  all  subject  to  law,  under  whose  in- 
fluence the  mind  struggles  to  extinguish  its 
own  liberty  and  to  deliver  itself  up  to  the 
dictates  of  absolute  faith.  Here  are  powers 
spiritual,  powers  temporal;  the  theocratic, 
the  monarchic,  the  aristocratic,  the  dem- 
ocratic elements  arrayed  in  hostile  lines. 
Here  are  all  classes  of  society,  all  social 
situations  in  a  perfect  jumble;  infinite 
wealth  beside  abysmal  poverty  ;  the  grandest 
pomp  and  magnificence  beside  abject  misery 
and  squalor ;  idealistic  chivalry  and  gross 
sensuality.  All  the  elements  and  influences 
of  social  life  known  to  the  world,  both  civil- 
ized and  barbarian,  are  here  in  contention. 
"  There  is  no  denying,"  says  Guizot,* 
"that  we  owe  to  this  confusion,  this  di- 
versity, this  tossing  and  jostling  of  elements, 
the  slow  progress  of  Europe,  the  storms  by 
which  she  has  been  buffeted,  the -miseries  to 
which  oftentimes  she  has  been  a  prey."  But, 
ho,we ver  dear  these  have  cost  us,  we  must  not 
regard  them  with  unmingled  regret.  What 
we  might  call  the  hard  fortune  of  European 
civilization  has  been  of  infinite  service  to 
the  progress  of  humanity  through  the  full, 
free  and  active  exercise  and  development  of 
all  the  faculties,  not  of  one,  but  of  many, 
many  people ;  indeed  of  all  those  who  now 
form  the  civilized  world.  Not  one  of  the 
elements  then  at  war  was  triumphant.  Some 
yielded,  others  gained,  but  none  singly  could 

*  History  of  Civilization  in  Europe.  Lect\  II. 


The  Social  Chaos  of  the  Dark  Ages.     63 

exclude  the  rest.  There  was  proximity,  amal- 
gamation, compromise,  till  at  last  out  of 
the  storm  and  stress  came  a  higher  type  of 
civilization  than  any,  bearing  forth  from 
the  contest  the  trophy — Liberty. 

Consider  how  the  whole  world  changed 
and  what  contentions  it  en  (lured  in  all  this 
long  interval ;  remember  how  long  on  this 
account  it  took  for  the  rays  of  that  Sun  of 
Freedom  that  burst  over  Judea  to  pierce  the 
darkness  that  enveloped  the  human  intellect 
groping  in  the  midst  of  this  social  chaos,  and 
you  will  understand  why,  in  all  these  ages, 
the  Social  Question,  as  we  understand  it, 
has  been  in  abeyance,  why,  only  to-day  we 
are  taking  up  the  problems  which  in  his 
times  and  amid  his  surroundings  our  great 
law-giver,  Moses,  so  successfully  solved. 
How  these  questions -have  again  been  brought 
forward,  becomes  the  subject  of  our  next 
inquiry  which  we  shall  answer  in  tracing 
out  the  rise  of  the  modern  free  laborer. 


64  The  Social  Question. 


DISCOURSE  VII. 

THE  RISE  OF  THE  MODERN  FREE  LABORER. 

I  WILL  ask  you  for  a  brief  season  to  try 
and  forget  the  present.  Leave  these  scenes 
and  wander  back  with  me  in  imagination  to 
other  times  and  strange  places.  Sink  into 
oblivion  for  awhile  the  things  that  distin- 
guish our  days.  Blot  out  the  discovery  of 
electricity  and  its  wonders  of  light  and  tele- 
graph and  telephone.  Go  back  to  the  time 
when  steam  was  not  yet  under  the  control 
of  man.  The  world  was  different  then.  The 
affrighting  locomotive,  with  its  serpentine 
trail  of  cars,  did  not  rumble  and  roar  through 
the  land,  rousing  with  its  shrieks  from  their 
slumbers  of  all  time,  the  denizens  of  the 
forest  and  the  cave.  Those  great  round 
columns  that  disfigure  our  cities  and  towns 
did  not  then  rise  into  the  heavens  to  vomit 
forth  the  smoke  and  soot;  and  the  race  of 
dusky  toilers  in  the  mills  and  factories,  work- 
shops and  foundries,  had  not  yet  been  born. 
Put  aside  newspapers  and  periodicals,  and  go 
back  even  to  beyond  the  time  when  the 
necromantic  art  of  printing  first  put  the  magi- 
cian to  blush.  Continue  on  this  retrogressive 
journey  until  the  wonders  of  modern  times 
one  by  one  recede  and  disappear  from  the 
earth  to  when  bombs  and  fuses,  mortars  and 
shells,  Krupp  guns  and  cannon  balls,  nitro- 
glycerine and  dynamite — to  when  even  gun* 


The  Rise  of  the  Modern  Free  Laborer.    65 

powder  had  not  yet  been  brought  up  from 
the  dark  and  fathomless  mines  in  which  men 
delve  for  knowledge,  to  when  the  sword  and 
javelin,  the  bow  and  arrow,  the  clumsy  pike 
and  armor  were  still  the  only  weapons  of 
warfare. 

To  get  to  those  times  we  must  sail  back 
across  the  ocean,  for  then  the  very  existence 
of  the  American  continent  was  a  secret 
known  but  to  the  winds — but  they  breathed 
not  a  whisper  about  it  as  they  went  speed- 
ing afar  across  the  world ;  known  also  to  the 
waves — -but  they  muttered  not  a  word  there- 
of to  men,  as  sullen  and  wrathful  they  rolled 
over  the  deep  and  dashed  upon  the  further 
shores. 

We  sail  down  the  most  beautiful  of  rivers 
— the  Rhine.  "  Like  the  stream  of  Time,  it 
flows  mid  the  ruins  of  the  Past,"  and  as  we 
follow  it  up  into  the  German  border  lands, 
the  mariners  cheerily  sing : 

"O  swift  is  thy  current  by  town  and  by 
tower, 

The  green  sunny  vale,  and  the  dark  lin- 
den bower, 

Thy  waves  as  they  dimple  smile  back  on 
the  plain, 

And  Rhine,  ancient  river,  thou'rt  German 
again." 

We  pass  the  place  where  the  castled  crag 
of  Drachenfels  frowns  down  upon  the  stream, 
and  we  let  the  eye  revel  in  the  grandeur  of 
the  panorama  of  beauty  that  moves  on  before 
us.  And  now  we  land  where  upon  the  sum- 
mit of  one  of  the  high,  overhanging,  rugged 
hills  a  castle  stands,  firm  and  forbidding, 
with  towers  and  battlements,  with  moat  and 
drawbridge,  barbacan  and  donjon  keep 
5 


66  The  Social  Question. 

"  with  strength  to  laugh  a  siege  to  scorn ; " 
a  defense  against  injury  from  abroad — a 
place  of  repose  or  of  revelry  for  those  within. 

But  we  shall  not  weary  ourselves  with 
climbing  that  great  hill  to  the  castle.  We 
know  full  well  that  a  baron  sits  there  in  state 
surrounded  by  his  retainers,  free  men, 
answerable  only  to  him,  and  he  a  host  unto 
himself,  answerable  to  none.  We  know  that 
the  chivalrous  knights  there  dance  attend- 
ance upon  lovely  ladies.  We  have  heard 
enough  of  the  intrigues  of  the  castle,  of  the 
loves  and  sorrows  of  its  beautiful  dames  and 
the  battles  and  bouts  of  the  lordly  knights. 
Unlike  other  visitors  who  hasten  on  to  do 
homage  at  the  castle,  let  us  pause  here  at  the 
foot  of  the  hill  and  note  what  is  to  be  seen. 
A  modest  church  lifts  its  spire  heavenward 
to  be  kissed  by  the  sun  and  to  smile  back 
greetings  to  the  clouds.  Around  about  it 
huddle  promiscuously  groups  of  dwellings. 
Here  abides  a  little  population  of  laborers. 
Our  interest  has  been  aroused  more  partic- 
ularly to  know  of  their  welfare.  Let  us 
then  draw  nearer. 

What  miserable,  wretched  homesteads  are 
these,  crudely  and  bunglingly  put  together 
of  the  roughest  timber  and  of  twigs  matted 
and  covered  with  clay.  But  a  poor  protection 
against  wind  and  rain  and  sleet  and  snow  is 
that  roof  of  thatched  straw  and  reeds.  With 
the  liberty  that  is  allowed  to  fancy,  we 
silently  enter.  There  is  but  one  room.  The 
floor — the  hard,  bare  ground,  at  best  covered 
with  dry  leaves,  Straw  pallets  are  here  for 
beds  and  logs  for  pillows.  Here  the  fowls  are 
at  roost  and  the  beasts  are  quartered  along 
with  man  and  wife  and  child,  and  male  and 
female  attendants,  all  living  in  most  uncom- 
fortable and  indecent  proximity.  There  is 


The  Rise  of  the  Modern  Free  Laborer.    67 

an  ill-fed,  cheerless  fire,  and  the  smoke  rising 
curls  up  and  about  freely,  searching  for  a 
place  of  exit,  and  finds  it  at  last,  a  hole 
in  the  roof.  Nowhere  a  chimney ;  nowhere 
a  window.  Men  with  grizzly  beards,women 
with  matted  and  unkempt  hair,  children 
filthy  and  half  naked,  all  clad  at  best  in  un- 
tanned  skins  roughly  put  together.  Such 
are  the  people  of  the  house  now  gathered 
round  to  their  mid-day  meal.  There  is  but 
one  platter.  From  this,  men,  women,  and 
children  all  alike  help  themselves  with 
wooden  spoons.  There  are  no  knives  and 
forks.  Out  of  the  same  wooden  trencher  all 
drink  in  turn.  Now  the  meal  is  over.  They 
all  hasten  away  to  their  work.  As  we  step  out 
after  them  we  pass  by  heaps  of  garbage  and 
rubbish  thrown  before  the  door  and  left  to 
putrefy  there.  We  are  sickened  at  the  sights 
and  sounds  and  odors  that  affect  us,  and  we 
hasten  after  the  men  and  women  into  the 
fields.  There  we  see  them  with  their  rude 
primitive  implements  hard  at  work ;  cheerless 
sullen,  stupid,  dull,  as  the  lifeless  clod  which 
with  his  rude  share  each  swain  turns  in  the 
furrow  and  to  which  he  is  in  every  manner 
so  nearly  allied.  Yes,  allied ;  for  the  slavery 
of  ancient  days  has  now  changed  into  serfdom 
and  the  laborer  from  being  attached  to  one 
man  whose  absolute  property  he  is,  is  now 
attached  to  one  piece  of  soil  from  which  he 
cannot  be  removed  either  by  gift  or  by  sale. 
He  is  bound  to  a  certain  estate ;  upon  that  he 
works.  When  the  land  is  sold  he  is  sold, 
with  it  into  the  service  of  another. 

Such  is  the  condition  of  the  laborer  in  the 
tenth  century  under  the  sway  of  the  feudal 
system.  The  lord  of  the  stately  castle  is 
enjoying  the  chase  or  is  practicing  at  arms 
either  in  the  tournament,  or  while  exercising 


68  The  Social  Question. 

the  FaustrecJit  (right  of  private  warfare) 
in  which  he  has  need  of  all  the  able-bodied 
men  of  his  estate  ;  or  perhaps  "he  is  lolling  in 
idleness  at  table,  and  is  indulging  in  the  ex- 
cesses of  food  and  strong  drink,  listening  to 
the  songs  of  the  minstrel  and  the  jokes  of 
his  fool  in  cap  and  bell,  while  down  in  the 
valley  in  misery  and  squalor  his  serfs  are  at 
work.  There  is  nothing  morally  in  common 
between  lord  and  serf.  They  drudge  for 
him  in  times  of  peace  and  fight  for  him  in 
times  of  war.  Such  is  the  price  they  pay  for 
existence.* 

We  come  on  down  through  the  tenth, 
eleventh,  twelfth,  thirteenth,  fourteenth, 
and  fifteenth  centuries:  there  is  but  slow 
and  scant  improvement.  In  speaking  of 
the  population  of  the  countries  of  Europe 
in  those  times  we  can  not  truthfully  use  the 
word  "people."  Those  serfs  do  not  form  a 
people.  They  have  no  connection  with 
persons,  things  or  governments.  For  them 
there  exists  no  common  destiny,  no  common 
country ;  they  are  subject  to  every  species 
of  lawless  oppression.  War,  not  work,  is 
still  the  occupation  of  men.  Everywhere 
lie  broad  tracts  of  land,  wild  and  unculti- 
vated ;  pathless  forests,  howling  wildernesses, 
swamps  and  fens  and  bogs,  exhaling  poison. 
There  are  no  roads,  except  those  built  long 
ago  by  the  Romans,  and  these  are  infested 
with  predatory  bands.  Everything  has 
adapted  itself  to  the  forms  of  feudalism.  The 
churches  and  monasteries  are  in  fact  large 
feudal  strongholds,  as  much  so  as  the  cas- 
tles that  dot  the  land.  The  cities  are  like- 


*  Scherr,  Deutsche  Kultur  und  Sitten  Geschichte  ; 
Buckle,  History  of  Civilization  in  England  ;  Guizot 
History  of  Civilization  (for  France)  ;  Lecky,  History  of 
European  Morals  ;  Hallam,  Middle  Ages. 


The  Rise  of  the  Modern  Free  Laborer.    69 

wise  under  the  patronage  and  protection  of 
the  feudal  barons. 

Out  of  this  abject  and  ignoble  condition, 
by  slow  and  painful  processes,  the  system 
of  modern  free  labor  takes  its  rise.  What 
brings  it  about,  do  you  ask  ?  Not  any  effort 
of  the  ruling  powers  in  state  and  in  church. 
It  comes  in  the  very  face  of  them.  They 
do  nothing  to  ameliorate  the  physical  con- 
dition of  the  people,  nothing  to  favor  their 
intellectual  development.  Century  after 
century  passes  away  and  the  laborers  are 
still  considered  no  better  than  the  cattle  in 
the  fields.  The  influences  that  bring  the 
change  are  many.  By  some  the  Crusades 
are  accredited  with  having  so  stirred  up 
and  altered  the  views  and  modes  of  life  as 
to  make  labor  reputable ;  by  others  it  is 
claimed  that  the  revolts  which  yielded  the 
freedom  of  the  cities  from  feudal  tribute, 
the  formation  of  the  Hanseatic  League  of 
the  German  Free  States,  the  affranchise- 
ment of  the  guilds,  the  creation  of  the 
Italian  republics,  the  rise  of  free  thought, 
culminating  in  the  Reformation  of  Luther, 
and  the  political  wars  and  wearisome  con- 
tentions that  demoralized  the  continent — 
that  one  or  several  of  these  influences  so 
changed  the  conditions  of  European  life  as 
to  overthrow  the  feudal  barriers,  and  upon 
their  ruins  to  draw  up  in  array  "  The  Third 
Estate  " — the  new  host,  the  common  people 
— and  out  of  their  midst,  to  slowly  push  for- 
ward into  just  recognition,  the  modern  free 
laborer. 

No  doubt  all  the  influences  cited  were  at 
work  to  accomplish  this.  But  let  us  set 
aside  all  theories  and  pet  doctrines,  let  us 
banish  at  once  all  sentiment  and  get  down 
to  the  hard  facts  in  the  matter.  Ask  your- 


70  The  Social  Question. 

self  what  is  it  to-day  that  pushes  the  world 
on  to  greater  enterpriser-lifting  men  thereby 
to  larger  views  and  more  far-reaching  coun- 
sels ?  What  is  it  that  calls  Stanley  back 
from  his  American  visit  and  dispatches  him 
into  the  heart  of  Africa  ?  What  is  it  that 
sets  DeLesseps  to  build  canals  across  Suez 
and  Panama  and  emboldens  Eads  to  con- 
struct his  ship-railway  across  Central  Amer- 
ica ?  What  is  that  at  home  here  so  urges 
the  dredging  of  our  harbor,  the  starting  of 
new  steamship  lines  to  New  York  and 
Liverpool,  and  the  building  of  railroads  into 
the  heart  of  the  mineral  regions?  It  is 
nothing  but  the  primitive  impulse  of  men  to 
get  means  of  subsistence  or  having  them  to 
earn  more  in  order  to  make  life  easier  and 
more  delightful. 

Now,  in  this  respect,  human  nature  was 
certainly  no  different  in  the  Middle  Ages 
than  it  is  now,  and  the  real  secret  of  the 
changes  then  wrought,  as  to-day,  may  be 
summed  up  in  the  word  '•'  Commerce."  She 
was  the  enchantress  whose  wand  worked 
such  marvelous  transformations,  and  her  first 
and  most  faithful  servants  then,  as  now,  were 
the  Jews.  Commerce  alone  can  unite  the 
world.  Through  commerce  alone  can  come 
the  fulfilment  of  the  dream,  the  hope  of  uni- 
versal peace.  The  Jews  are  everywhere 
loving  and  pursuing  peace,  laboring  to  bring 
all  the  world  under  the  shadow  of  the  protect- 
ing wings  of  peace.  In  the  midst  of  feudal 
anarchy  the  Jews  alone  stood  free.  They 
kept  alive  and  perfected  the  commercial 
traditions  of  the  world.  They  were  free  be- 
cause they  could  not  possibly  become  lords, 
however  rich,  nor  serfs,  however  poor ;  for 
while  others  could  buy  estates  or  sell  them- 
selves into  serfdom  when  driven  for  want  of 


The  Rise  of  the  Modern  Free  Laborer.   71 

bread,  the  Christian  oath  of  fealty  that  was 
required,  by  king  and  lord,  forever  barred  the 
Jew  from  that  act,*  This  is  a  fact  to  which 
men  have  been  strangely  blind.  With  this 
fact  revealed  let  us  once  for  all  down  with 
the  accursed  lie,  that  (because  the  Jew  did 
not  hold  land  in  Europe  in  the  past),  lets  his 
enemies  stamp  him  as  an  alien  and  falsely 
charge  him  with  lack  of  patriotism,  branding 
him  a  leech  sucking  the  blood  of  riches  but 
producing  nothing. 

The  Jews  were  free  in  the  Middle  Ages  be- 
cause they  alone  could  trade  with  money. 
For  three  thousand  years  the  world  has 
been  cursed  with  the  fallacy  that  to  deal 
in  money  is  a  sin.  The  last  vestiges 
of  that  supertsition  are  but  now  fading 
away.  In  the  Middle  Ages  it  was  a  civil  as 
well  as  an  ecclesiastical  crime.  In  modern 
times  political  economy  has  made  simple  the 
true  and  just  and  necessary  part  that  interest 
plays  in  all  pecuniary  transactions.  The 
Jews  never  had  any  such  a  ruinous  fallacy  to 
hamper  them.  For  these  two  reasons  trade 
of  all  kinds  fell  exclusively  into  their  hands; 
they  became,  as  Kiesselbach  says,  f  "  an  eco- 
nomical necessity  to  the  Middle  Ages."  So 
necessary  were  they  to  the  feudal  landlords 
that  despite  the  multiplicity  of  the  toll-houses 
and  the  dangers  of  the  highways,  they  held 
safe-conducts  that  enabled  them  to  travel  far 
and  wide.  They  went  great  distances  for  rare 
products,  and  brought  within  reach  of  the 
wealthy  customers  in  castle  and  abbey  the 

*  Prof.  Ernst  Otto  Stobbe  in  his  History  of  the 
Jeivs  in  Germany  during  the  Middle  Ages  has  recently 
shown  that  it  was  because  of  the  religious  character  of 
the  trade-guilds  that  the  Jews  were  prevented  from  fol- 
lowing handicrafts  during  mediaeval  times. 

iEinleitung  in  die  Europaische  Handelsgeschichte. 


72  The  Social  Question. 

finest  clothes,  the   rarest  jewels,  spices  and 
luxuries  of  every  sort. 

By  much  travel  they  learned  the  needs 
and  preferences  of  different  communities  and 
from  the  centers  of  their  industries  in  Spain, 
and  the  Levant  brought  the  appropriate  sup- 
plies. They  corresponded  with  each  other 
carried  samples  and  note-books,  and  little,  by 
little  evolved  the  primitive  forms  of  the  mod- 
ern banking  system.  * 
"  When  a  whole  people,"  says  the  elder  Dis- 
raeli, f  "  devote  themselves  to  one  great 
pursuit,  one  single  art,  they  open  sour- 
ces of  invention,  they  reach  a  noble  per- 
fection. Thus  in  the  Middle  Ages  the 
genius  of  the  Jews  produced  the  wonder- 
ful invention  of  bills  of  exchange — an  object, 
like  the  art  of  printing,  become  too  familiar 
to  be  admired.  The  miracle  has  ceased  and 
its  utility  only  remains,  yet  both  are  sources 
of  civilization  and  connect  together,  as  in 
one  commonwealth,  the  whole  universe. 
This  successful  pursuit  of  the  Jews,  however 
worked  their  own  fatality.  For  the  steel- 
clad  baron  they  were  sponges  to  suck  in  as 
much  water  as  they  could  hold,  that  his 
protecting  hand  as  he  listed  might  squeeze 
them  to  their  last  drop." 

It  is  foreign  to  our  purpose  to  trace  out 
the  horrible  persecutions  to  which  the  Jews 
in  those  times  were  subject,  in  which  they 
displayed  a  heroism  of  which  it  is  said  that 
that  of  "the  defenders  of  every  other  creed 
fades  into  insignificance  before  this  martyr 
people  who,  for  thirteen  centuries,  confront- 
ed all  the  evils  that  the  fiercest  fanaticism 
could  devise.  But  above  all  this  the  genius 
of  this  wonderful  people  rose  supreme."  $ 

*  Blanqui,  Hist.  Polit.  J£con.Ch.  xv. 
t  Genius  of  Judaism 


The  Rise  of  the  Modern  Free  Laborer.    73 

When  the  intellect  of  Europe  awoke  out  of 
its  Middle-Age  stupor  and  shook  off  the  mire 
and  filth  of  fanatic  error  and  superstition  in 
which  it  had  been  groveling  about  in  besotted 
ignorance,  it  found  that  the  Jews  had  kept 
learning  awake  in  Spain  ;  that  the  Jews  had 
peddled  not  only  wares  from  door  to  door 
through  Europe  but  also  ideas  ;  that  the  Jews 
had  brought  not  only  the  finest  fabrics  but  al- 
so the  learning  of  Asia  into  the  West.  When 
terrible  plagues  infested  the  world  at  that 
time,  the  people  cried  out  for  help,  and  there 
were  none  but  Jews  who  understood  medicine 
enough  to  help  them.  When  the  sovereigns 
got  poor  and  the  cities  seized  the  chance  to 
buy  their  freedom,  industry  got  a  new  im- 
pulse ;  when  the  crusaders  set  the  people  to 
traveling  and  broke  up  their  narrow  con- 
ditions ;  when  thus  navigation  was  develop- 
ed and  inventions  brought  from  Asia,  then 
the  industrial  elements  received  an  extraordi- 
nary impulse,  yet  in  all  this  the  world  came 
groping  slowly  along  in  the  path  which  the 
Jews  had  ages  before  hewn  out,  and  all  the 
while  quietly  kept  clear  despite  every  diffi- 
culty. As  after  much  striking  of  the  flint 
came  the  spark  and  the  blaze,  so  after  much 
painful  effort  on  the  part  of  the  Jews  to 
bring  better  conditions  and  comforts  of  life, 
better  knowledge  and  broader  views  of 
religion  and  morality  to  Europe,  these  pur- 
poses at  last  flamed  out,  and  those  reforms 
overspread  the  world  which  produced  the 
conditions  that  made  possible  the  rise  of 
the  system  of  modern  free  labor. 


74  The  Social  Question. 


DISCOURSE  vm. 

THE  BISE  OF  THE  MODERN   FKEE   LA- 
BOREB,  (Continued). 

IT  was  the  way  of  the  world  in  ancient 
times  for  men  to  get  all  work  done  by  cap- 
tives of  war.  Thus  all  workmen  were  origi- 
nally slaves.  In  the  process  of  time  slavery 
was  transformed  into  serfdom,  in  which  the 
laborer  was  attached  to  the  soil,  instead  of 
the  person  of  his  master:  he  could  not  be 
sold  unless  the  land  were  sold.  The  con- 
dition of  serfdom  lasted  on  down  through 
the  eighteenth  century.  In  Scotland  the 
colliers  and  laborers  in  the  salt-works  re- 
mained in  that  condition  until  an  act  of 
Parliament  in  1775  emancipated  them.  This 
(in  civilized  lands)  was  probably  the  last 
and  fatal  blow  given  to  that  degraded  con- 
dition. Thereupon  ensued  the  freedom  of 
the  laborer.  Like  the  waves  of  the  incoming 
tide  that  beat  higher  and  higher  with  each 
advance,  so  the  political,  social,  and  economic 
freedom  of  the  world's  workers  beat  higher 
and  higher  with  the  advance  of  time,  until 
at  the  close  of  the  last  century  it  washed 
away  every  barrier  that  had  impeded  the  on- 
ward sweep  of  its  mighty  currents. 

Let  us  try  to  discover  the  forces  that  im- 
pelled them  on.  It  is  difficult  to  discern 
amid  the  commotions  and  clashing  events  of 
that  brilliant  epoch,  the  eighteenth  century, 
what  specific  influences  those  were  that  so 


The  Rise  of  the  Modern  Free  Laborer.    75 

wrought  upon  the  more  obscure  classes  of  the 
people,  the  laborers.  The  origin  of  the 
great  change  from  serfdom  to  freedom  would 
seem  to  bear  out  the  maxim  that  "  trifles 
make  the  sum  of  human  things." 

Then,  even  as  now,  the  hearts  of  men 
were  filled  with  an  intense  avaricious  longing 
whenever  they  considered  the  magic  that 
could  be  wrought  with  gold.  Fondly  they 
indulged  in  those  vague  fancies  that  had 
long  filled  their  minds  of  a  land  of  gold 
far,  far  across  the  sea,  an  Eldorado  where 
the  mountains  under  the  beams  of  the  rising 
and  setting  sun  revealed  their  inmost  secrets 
and  told  of  the  veins  of  yellow  ore  under  the 
outer  tegument  of  trees  and  herbs  and  grass, 
and  eagerly  conjured  up  visions  of  remote 
caves  filled  with  stalagmites  and  stalactites 
of  the  precious  metal.  The  rivers  of  that 
glorious  land  were  supposed  to  be  lined 
with  the  shining  metal  that  came  down  in 
abundance  washed  through  the  channels  of 
the  mountains  and  streams.  Many  and 
many  were  the  voyages  undertaken  long 
before  the  age  of  discovery  to  find  those 
islands  of  gold.  But  in  the  meantime,  sages, 
men  of  profound  erudition  and  secrecy,  not 
to  be  deluded  by  vain  fantasies  to  try  the 
dangers  and  expeditions  of  the  seas,  re- 
mained at  home,  secluded  themselves  from 
all  the  world  in  the  secret  chambers  of 
gloomy  castles,  there  bent  low  over  the  re- 
torts and  chemicals  of  their  laboratories, 
every  faculty  alert,  every  energy  strained, 
to  find  out  the  mystery  of  the  philosopher's 
stone  for  which  the  alchemists  during  hun- 
dreds arid  hundreds  of  years  through  the 
twilight  of  reason  had  toiled,  in  order  by  it 
to  transmute  all  baser  metals  into  kingly- 
gold. 


76  The  Social  Question. 

Strange  to  say  these  dreams  of  early  days 
were,  in  a  certain  sense,  wondrously  realized, 
and  by  their  realization  came  those  change ; 
in  the  life  of  the  people  to  which  we  have 
reverted.  The  golden  city  and  the  country 
of  Eldorado,  of  which  Sir  Walter  Raleigh 
has  written  such  charming  accounts,  were 
proven  to  be  something  more  than  dreams 
when  expedition  after  expedition  returned 
from  the  new  world,  bringing  thence  the 
treasures  so  long  dreamed  of.  The  dis- 
covery of  the  gold  mines  of  America  in- 
creased in  a  few  years  the  metal  in  circula- 
tion in  Europe  to  twelve  times  its  previous 
amount.  From  1750  to  1800  the  importation 
of  specie  into  Europe  regularly  exceeded  one 
hundred  and  eighty  millions  a  year.  This 
gave  a  powerful  stimulus  to  industry,  for 
enterprises  that  would  not  have  otherwise 
been  thought  of  sprang  into  being ;  habits 
changed,  luxuries  grew  into  greater  demand  ; 
transactions  which  had  hitherto  been  difficult 
or  impossible  employed  a  greater  quantity 
of  money  and  a  greater  number  of  men. 
There  was  an  immense  distribution  of  wages, 
and  the  people  for  the  first  time  began  to 
acquire  lands  and  cultivate  small  farms  and 
hope  for  happy  days. 

Of  course  such  a  great  change  could  not  be 
brought  about  without  suffering.  There  was 
a  sudden  rise  in  prices,  and  it  took  some 
time  before  the  increase  of  farm  rents 
and  salaries  could  be  adjusted  into  harmony 
with  prevailing  high  rates.  People  were 
very  much  alarmed,  and  complained  bitter- 
ly. There  was  also  a  very  feverish  impulse 
given  to  speculation.  Sugar,  cotton,  tobacco, 
spices  hitherto  unknown,  became  the  objects 
of  trade  and  manufacture.  Money  had  to 
be  advanced.  Home  banks  sprang  up  from 


The  Rise  of  the  Modern  Free  Laborer.    77 

the  needs  of  labor,  and  the  credit  system 
(which,  though  we  rarely  think  of  it  in  that 
light,  has  become  one  of  the  world's  most 
powerful  moral  influences  through  the  con- 
trol it  exercises  over  character)  from  the 
hands  of  the  Jews  passed  into  general  use. 
What  had  been  deemed  an  evil  proved  of 
untold  good.  "  Credit,"  says  M.  Blanqui,* 
"has  wrought  a  profound  revolution  in  the 
relations  of  peoples.  The  colossal  enterprises 
of  which  our  century  opens  the  career,  the 
spirit  of  association  that  spreads  like  a  net- 
work over  the  face  of  the  world,  the  struggles 
everywhere  going  on  between  civilization  and 
the  relics  of  barbarism,  are  wholly  the  work 
of  credit.  Since  the  birth  of  banks  every 
man  has  been  able  to  carry  his  head  high 
with  the  pride  which  the  hope  of  honorable 
independence  gives.  Landed  proprietors 
have  seen  the  workshops  of  industry  rise  by 
the  side  of  their  castles ;  the  seas  are  covered 
with  ships.  Everything  has  advanced  with 
rapid  pace,  and  the  world  has  made  more 
progress  within  two  hundred  years  than  it 
did  in  the  previous  ten  centuries."  Such  was 
the  fulfilment  of  the  Eldorado  dreams  of  the 
Middle  Ages. 

In  like  manner  were  the  labors  of  the  vision- 
ary alchemists  crowned  with  unexpected 
achievements  and  successes.  It  was  while 
engaged  in  the  search  for  the  mystical  phi- 
losopher's stone,  we  arc  told,  that  Roger  Ba- 
con stumbled  on  the  composition  of  gunpow- 
der, which,  in  due  course  of  time,  not  only 
utterly  transformed  the  conditions  and 
modes  of  warfare,  but  what  concerns  our 
inquiry  more,  gave  rise  to  an  exclusively  mili- 
tary profession,  that  is,  it  first  created  the 
distinction  between  soldier  and  civilian. 

*  Hint.  Polit.  Econ.,  p.p.  3:29-30. 


78  The  Social  Question. 

Before  that  all  the  men  in  Europe  had  formed 
one  massive  standing  army ;  now  arms  be- 
came the  profession  of  the  few,  and  the 
masses  of  men  turned  at  last  from  warfare 
to  work  as  their  legitimate  occupation. 

It  was  in  the  search. for  the  "philosopher's 
stone"  by  which  all  metals  were  to  be  changed 
into  gold,  that  modern  inventions,  springing 
from  the  discoveries  in  chemistry  and  phys- 
ics took  their  rise.  Boetticher  thus  acci- 
dentally lighted  on  the  invention  of  Dresden 
porcelain  manufacture  ;  Geber  on  the  prop- 
erties of  acids ;  Van  Helmont  on  the  nature 
of  gas,  and  Glauber  on  the  "  salts"  which 
bear  his  name.  Then  followed,  in  due  pro- 
cess of  time,  the  various  great  mechanical 
inventions  led  by  the  spinning-jenny  of  Ark- 
wright,  the  steam-engine  of  Watt,  and  the 
locomotive  of  Stephenson,  which  in  little 
more  than  a  generation  changed  the  whole 
course  of  history  and  revolutionized  the 
modes  of  life. 

It  is  conceded  that  nothing  in  modern  his- 
tory has  wielded  a  wider  influence,  socially 
and  politically,  than  this  sudden  growth  of 
manufactures.  It  inaugurated  a  movement 
of  disintegration,  breaking  the  old  ties  that 
had  bound  lord  and  serf,  landlord  and  ten- 
ant, master  and  servant,  and  the  members 
of  the  Middle  Age  guilds  and  corporations. 
It  destroyed  old  habits  of  discipline  and 
orderliness  and  created  new  cravings  for 
wealth.  Formerly  the  son  had  been  satisfied 
to  inherit  the  estate  and  trade  and  habits 
and  views  of  his  father  as  he  in  turn  had 
done  in  the  pattern  of  his  paternal  ancestors. 
Now,  however,  there  came  a  restless  eager- 
ness to  change.  A  man  could  no  longer 
sit  at  the  loom  and  weave  the  cloth  while 
his  children  by  his  side  prepared  the  distaff 


The  Rise  of  the  Modern  Free  Laborer.  79 

and  his  wife  sat  spinning  at  her  wheel.  A 
few  apprentices  and  a  little  capital  had 
served  to  give  him  a  nice  competence,  but 
now  the  apprentices  were  drawn  off  to  the 
towns,  the  workmen  crowded  into  vast  fac- 
tories, collecting  around  the  great  propelling 
machine,  which  startled  them  with  its  giant 
power.  And  so  old  ties  and  habits  were 
broken  up,  till  at  last  the  workman  stands 
free,  entirely  free,  as  we  see  him  to-day,  when 
there  is  no  bond  but  that  of  interest  which 
binds  him  as  a  laborer  to  any  man. 

What  a  stupendous  change  is  this  we 
have  traced  out  from  the  days  of  the  labor- 
er's slavery  until  these  days  of  his  perfect 
emancipation  !  But  it  came  not  as  easy  as 
the  telling.  Its  path  lay  through  the  red 
seas  of  revolution  and  along  the  high  ridge 
of  suffering  by  the  abysses  of  deepest  misery 
and  woe. 

This  freedom  in  economic  conditions  came 
only  after  political  and  social  freedom.  The 
undying  protest  of  the  human  race  against 
the  inequitable  distribution  of  the  profits  of 
labor  could  only  be  heard  after  the  laborer 
had  conquered  the  right  to  be  heard.  In 
the  eighteenth  century  free  inquiry  for  the 
first  time  became  universal.  The  veil  of 
mystery  was  torn  away  from  all  questions — 
religious,  political,  philosophical,  social,  mor- 
al, physical — everything  was  studied,  doubt- 
ed, systematized.  There  never  had  been 
such  a  time  for  tearing  up  institutions  from 
their  very  foundations. 

From  1751  to  1772  was  published  the  famous 
Encyclopedie  in  28  volumes,  which  was  con- 
tributed to  by  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  D'Alem- 
bert,  Diderot  and  others  noted  for  their  rev- 
olutionary ideas.  At  the  same  time  arose 
the  school  of  the  French  Economists,  Ques- 


80  The  Social  Question. 

nay,  Malesherbes,  Turgot,  etc.,  a  few  gen- 
erous and  noble  philosophers,  who  first  con- 
ceived the  idea  that  with  regard  to  the  social 
relations  of  mankind  there  must  be  some 
underlying  principles  of  eternal  truth ;  that 
there  is  a  physiology  of  the  social  body  as 
well  as  of  the  human  body,  and  laws  for  the 
one  as  for  the  other  by  which  they  prosper 
or  waste  away.  They  tried  to  ferret  out  and 
establish  the  principles  of  an  abstract  science 
of  the  natural  rights  of  man ;  in  short,  they 
became  the  founders  of  the  great  modern  sci- 
ience  of  Political  Economy.  Directly  after 
them  came  Adam  Smith,  the  Scotch  philoso- 
pher, who  in  1776  published  The  Wealth  of 
Nations,  which,  from  the  amount  of  actual  in- 
fluence it  has  exerted  in  the  world,  is  deemed 
the  most  important  book  ever  written.*  The 
fallacy  that  had  hampered  the  world  for  ages 
was  at  last  repudiated  by  showing  that  wealth 
consists  not  merely  of  gold  and  silver,  but 
of  any  and  all  consumable  wares  produced 
by  the  labor  of  men.  Money — gold  or  silver 
— is  only  one  form  of  merchandise,  selected 
as  an  instrument  of  exchange.  In  real- 
ity the  goods  of  foreign  countries  are 
eventually  purchased  by  the  native  produc- 
tions of  each  land.  Manufactures  were  thus 
brought  into  their  proper  place  of  importance, 
freed  from  every  fetter  of  error  and  preju- 
dice. 

The  introduction  of  machines  met  a  fierce 
opposition  among  the  people  because  the  first 
result  was  to  throw  many  out  of  employment 
and  to  reduce  wages,  but  by  the  efforts  of 
the  political  economists  the  world  at  last  has 
learned  that  the  change  which  machinery 
brought  13  of  untold  advantage,  for  the  in- 
creased production  unfailingly  creates  a  per- 

*  Buckle,  History  of  Civilization,  Vol.  ii.  349. 


The  rise  of  the  Modern  Free  Labor.  81 

manent  demand,  and  capital  gained  in  one 
department  finds  its  outlet  in  another.*  From 
this  circle  of  French  Economists  came  forth 
the  great  social  reforms  of  the  last  half  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  The  condition  of 
.the  laborers  hitherto  so  humbled  and  un- 
justly degraded  rises  to  an  honorable  rank, 
and  all  other  conditions  correspondingly  im- 
prove. But  well  you  know  that  all  this 
was  not  effected  by  the  methods  of  peace. 
The  Declaration  of  Independence  in  the 
United  States  and  the  French  Revolution 
proclaimed  the  sovereignty  of  the  people, 
and  brought  down  the  principle  of  the 
brotherhood  of  men  from  the  dream  heights 
of  the  ideal.  The  eighteenth  century  was 
profoundly  speculative  and  theoretical. 
The  nineteenth  century  is  intensely  practical 
and  earnest.  The  last  century  set  the 
laborer  free  ;  it  is  the  problem  of  the  pres- 
ent century  to  make  his  freedom  a  reality, 
to  make  him  able  to  maintain  and  rightly 
use  it. 

Thus,  as  best  we  could  in  so  narrow  a 
scope,  we  have  indicated  the  great  general 
influences  that  gave  rise  to  the  freedom  of 
modern  laborers.  With  these  entirely  new 
conditions  came  new  difficulties,  vexations 
and  problems.  These  very  difficulties,  vexa- 
tions, and  problems  constitute  what  is  known 
as  the  special  Social  Question  of  to-day. 
6 


82  The  Social  Question. 


DISCOURSE  IX. 

THE  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  MODERN  LABORER. 

JEAN  PAUL,  the  graphic  German  author, 
pictures  a  remarkable  scene.  It  is  the  night 
of  the  memorable  battle  of  Waterloo  over 
which  the  star  of  Napoleon  has  set.  The 
war-drums  have  ceased  their  beating.  The 
roar  of  the  musketry  is  silenced.  The  mad- 
dening outcries  of  the  desperate  combatants 
are  hushed  forever.  Far  and  wide  over  the 
blood-red  field,  in  wretched  confusion,  lie 
smoking  steeds  and  reeking  soldiers,  writh- 
ing and  gasping  in  the  death  agony.  The  terri- 
ble night  wears  itself  slowly  out.  At  length 
in  the  eastern  sky  the  torch  of  day  sends  out 
its  earliest  beams,  and  lo !  upon  the  failing 
sight  of  the  dying  soldiers,  nature's  brightest 
splendor  falls  from  a  glorious  rainbow  that 
spans  the  morning  skies.  It  is  a  crown  of 
victory  stretched  forth  from  on  high  ;  it  is  a 
soft  band  of  varied  tints  with  which  heaven 
would  swathe  the  bleeding  wounds  of  earth; 
it  is  a  bow  of  promise,  symbol  like  unto  the 
first,  when,  after  the  deluge  of  waters,  God 
promised  never  more  to  blot  out  men  from 
off  the  face  of  the  earth — a  second  bow  is 
this,  coining  after  the  great  deluge  of  blood, 
and  it  is  a  token  of  even  a  grander  assurance 
than  the  first,  giving  promise  that  never  more 
shall  man,  even  by  the  hand  of  his  fellow- 
mortal,  be  debased,  enslaved,  or  wantonly 
blotted  out  from  off  the  face  of  the  earth, 


The  Complaint  of  the  Modern  Laborer.  83 

Is  this  but  the  poetic  fancy  of  one  whose 
heart  beats  fast  with  the  impulses  of  a  fond 
but  idle  trust  in  the  reality  of  brotherly  love, 
or  is  there  indeed  any  fulfillment  of  the  prom- 
ise of  better  days  which  were  predicted  by 
the  rainbow  of  Waterloo  ?  This  much  we 
know  and  can  affirm,  the  old  thrall  of  sub- 
jection was  then  broken.  After  the  long-drawn 
subtle  and  painful  processes  of  the  centuries 
which  we  have  striven  to  trace  out  in 
previous  discourses,  at  last  the  shackles  were 
melted  away  in  the  heat  of  the  last  century's 
revolutions,  and  the  laborer  of  modern  days 
stood  free.  Yes,  the  old  thrall  of  subjection 
is  broken,  and  work  has  supplanted  war  as  the 
legitimate  occupation  of  civilized  men. 

As  we  studied  out  and  marked  these  achieve- 
ments, our  hearts  have  indeed  been  thrill- 
ed with  the  hope  of  the  grander  and  better 
things  in  store  for  struggling  humanity.  We 
have  seen  how  reforms  in  Church  and  State, 
how  Peasant  Wars,  French  and  American 
Revolutions,  Philosophies  and  the  Sciences, 
Discovery  and  Inventions,  and  a  thousand 
auxiliary  influences  have  struggled,  urged, 
persisted,  and  at  last  achieved  the  conquest 
of  the  indefeasible  rights  of  men.  We  have 
fairly  shouted  with  gratitude  to  God  and  to 
the  heroes  on  earth  as  we  recorded  the  tri- 
umph of  political  equality,  saw  the  barriers 
of  caste  demolished,  and  the  outrageous  dis- 
tinctions of  olden  times  forever  obliterated 
on  that  day  when  every  man  was  given  a 
voice  in  the  administration  of  civil  affairs. 

"  Let  Israel  still  hope  in  the  Lord,"  we  say 
with  the  Psalmist,  "  for  with  the  Lord  there 
is  kindness  and  with  him  is  redemption  in 
abundance."  For  have  we  not  seen  the  growth 
of  religious  liberty,  the  confession  of  theo- 
cratic equality,  the  spread  of  a  universal  relig- 


84  The  Social  Question. 

ious  toleration  and  the  doctrine  of  the  Proph- 
et at  last  finding  its  echo  in  the  hearts  of  men 
prompting  to  the  reiteration  of  his  dictum. 
"  Have  we  not  all  one  Father ;  hath  not  God 
created  us  all  ?  "  * 

Verily,  there  is  a  fulfillment  of  this  omen 
of  promise,  was  the  consoling  unction  we 
laid  to  our  souls  as  with  the  spread  of  in- 
dustry and  the  emancipation  of  the  workman 
we  saw  honest  labor  coming  day  by  day  into 
its  merited  rank  and  esteem  ;  saw  how  the 
insane  prejudices  of  the  past  against  the 
soiled  hands  of  hardy  toil  were  dying  out, 
and  the  ranks  grow  more  and  more  decimat- 
ed of  those  silly  persons  who  look  down 
upon  working  people  and  would  disdain  to 
handle  a  tool  or  household  utensil.  We 
have  rejoiced  to  see  that  Labor  indeed  lifts 
all  material  civilization  upon  its  shoulders 
and  strides  the  world  like  a  Colossus — we 
have  rejoiced  to  see  men  become  honest  at 
last  and  pay  to  it  their  full  meed  and  tribute 
of  praise.  We  glory  to  see  its  triumphs 
after  all  the  misery  and  persecution  of  ages. 
We  delight  in  the  spectacle  of  statesmen 
absorbed  in  its  problems;  philanthropists 
striving  to  ease  its  tasks ;  poets  and  orators 
ringing  its  praises ;  kings  bowing  in  homage 
before  it ;  republics  anxious  for  its  alliance, 
all  rendering  acknowledgment  that  it  sur- 
passes in  importance  every  other  aim  and 
pursuit  of  civilization.!  We  recalled  those 
dismal  epochs  of  history  that  we  had  pre- 
viously passed  in  review,  when  slavery  and 
serfdom  were  branded  into  the  flesh  of 
workmen.  Then  the  controlling  arm  of  the 
State  could  not  restrain  the  hand  of  violence, 
and  the  smith  who  fashioned  the  sword  and 

*  Malachi  ii.  10. 

t  Lorimer,  Studies  in  Social  Life,  p.  91. 


The  Complaint  of  the  Modern  Labortr.  85 

spear  for  his  baron  often  made  the  weapon 
that  ended  his  own  life.  Then  Commerce, 
the  modern  Briareus,  the  giant,  with  many 
hundred  hands  reaching  forth  in  every  di- 
rection for  the  means  of  human  subsistence, 
had  not  yet  risen  to  meet  and  overcome  the 
onsets  of  famine.  Then  science  had  not 
gone  forth  armed  cap-a-pie  and  confident  of 
its  victory  over  whole  hosts  of  diseases  and 
plagues.  As  these,  with  all  their  lovely 
retinue  of  advantages,  comforts,  improve- 
ments, elegancies,  luxuries,  and  modes  and 
devices  for  physical,  mental  and  moral  bet- 
terment, passed  in  memory's  review  we 
exclaimed  again :  "  Truly  this  is  victory ! 
and  the  bow  of  promise  that  gladdened  the 
eyes  of  those  last  slaves  of  the  old  regime, 
who  perished  on  the  field  of  Waterloo,  was 
a  truthful  token  unto  these  men,  their  sons 
and  successors." 

It  was  a  beautiful,  joyous,  and  comforting 
reflection  to  which  we  had  surrendered 
ourselves,  and  lovingly  we  lingered  over  it. 
But  suddenly,  rudely,  as  if  from  a  pleasant 
dream,  we  were  aroused  by  a  dismal  and 
awful  wail  of  despair,  followed  quickly  by 
the  mutterings  of  many  voices  full  of  fierce 
passion,  and  louder  than  these  the  piercing 
shrieks  of  bitter  hatred  and  the  prolonged 
cries  of  pain  and  suffering  ;  and  louder  still 
than  all  these  the  fierce  and  angry  shouts  of 
revolt  and  insurrection. 

What  is  this?  It  is  the  outcry  of  the 
great  army  of  the  discontented.  It  comes  up 
from  the  streets  and  alleys  from  those  who 
are  hungry  and  have  nothing  to  eat;  from 
those  who  are  cold  and  lack  clothes  and 
shelter ;  it  comes  from  the  great  army  of  the 
unemployed,  who  are  roaming  through  the 
land ;  it  comes  from  the  factories  and  mines 


86  The  Social  Question. 

and  workshops,  muttering  against  "  starva- 
tion  wages  ;"  it  comes  from  tenements,  hovels, 
courts,  and  rookeries,  appealing  in  heart-rend- 
ing terms  for  help  against  cruel  fate  ;  it  comes 
from  struggling  farmers  and  troubled  mer- 
chants vigorously  protesting  against  the 
tyranny  of  monopolies  ;  it  makes  itself  heard 
in  every  village  and  town,  along  the  rail- 
roads, in  the  great  cities,  and  its  clamors  are 
augmented  by  the  bitter  complaints  that 
come  rolling  across  the  waters  from  Ireland 
and  England,  from  Italy,  Austria,  Germany, 
Russia,  and  France.  And  what  does  it 
mean  ?  What  does  it  say  ?  It  declares  the 
bow  of  promise  a  phantasy  and  delusion,  and 
all  its  seeming  fulfillments  a  lie.  "  You  have 
given  us  political  freedom,"  it  avers  a  to 
society,  "but  have  made  us  industrial  slaves. 
You  have  given  us  machines  and  labor-saving 
implements,  but  we  are  like  galley-slaves 
bound  to  their  service.  The  fires  are  light- 
ed, the  steam  is  on  and  we  must  be  at  our 
posts,  living  automatons,  mere  appendages 
of  monster  machines.  Thus  we  grow  more 
and  more  automatic;  more  and  more  stupid, 
as  the  days  go  by.  You  have  supplanted 
war  with  work;  but  yet  the  flower  of  the 
old  world's  population  is  drained  into  the 
military  service,  the  tread  of  the  armies 
shakes  the  continent  of  Europe ;  their  brist- 
ling bayonets  glitter  in  the  sun  and  to-day 
ominous  manoeuvres  of  ambitious  command- 
ers fill  the  whole  world  with  doubt  and 
dread.  Herein  America  the  militia,  police- 
men, and  Pinkerton  detectives  are  banded 
together  to  keep  the  workmen  down. 

"  You  have  made  us  free,  have  taught  us 
to  read  and  write,  have  filled  us  with  a  thirst 
for  knowledge  and  a  yearning  for  the  grati- 
fication of  new  tastes  and  hopes  only  to  dis- 


The  Complaint  of  the  Modern  Laborer.  87 

appoint  us,  only  to  deceive  us  only  to  make 
us  more  discontented  because  all  these  new 
desires  are  hopelessly  beyond  our  reach  and 
their  gratification  forever  denied  us,  because, 
forsooth,  we  never  have  time  nor  means  at 
our  disposal.  We  are  hungry  and  must  toil 
for  bread. 

"  You  have  made  us  free,  but  that  only 
means  that  you  have  cast  us  off.  Under  the 
old  system  we  were  cared  for,  we  belonged 
to  some  one,  our  wants  were  looked  to ;  now 
there  are  no  bonds  of  interest  that  attach  us 
to  any  human  soul.  When  our  wages  are  paid 
we  are  left  to  shift  for  ourselves  as  best  we 
may.  If  we  fail,  through  some  calamity,  to 
meet  the  payment  of  our  rent  on  house  or 
land, we  are  ordered  off,  and  must  look  out  for 
ourselves.  On  the  steamboat- wharf  the  mate 
of  the  vessel  stands  armed  with  revolver  and 
cane,  and  orders  about  his  stevedores  as  if 
they  were  brutes,  not  men.  In  the  great 
mercantile  establishments  salesmen  and 
women  are  made  to  stand  the  live-long  day, 
though  it  be  in  idleness.  In  the  great 
factories  little  children  work  under  the  terror 
of  their  overseers,  denied  every  privilege  and 
doomed  to  early  decay  and  death.  There  is 
no  feeling  in  your  hearts,  no  sympathy  in 
your  souls.  All  your  religion  is  fine  senti- 
ment, flimsy  and  flashy  show  before  the 
world.  You  may  deceive  men,  but  our  cries 
of  anguish  pierce  the  hollow  bubble  of  your 
pretensions,  and  before  God  your  iniquity 
will  stand  revealed. 

"  Look  upon  these  contrasts,"  cries  the 
the  poor  laborer.  "  Brown  stone  mansions, 
Queen  Anne  villas,  gaudy  club  houses  and 
gorgeous  theatres  along  side  of  vile  hovels, 
filthy  tenements  and  beggarly  alms-houses, 
and  jails.  The  former  are  for  you,  the  latter 


88  rllie  Social  Question. 

for  us.  In  the  courts  there  is  one  law  for 
the  rich,  another  for  the  poor.  Money- 
bags have  a  charm  that  bench,  bar  and  jury 
can  not  withstand.  See  the  exclusive  priv- 
ileges, franchises,  and  rights  granted  to  the 
rich  syndicates  and  great  proprietors  own- 
ing farms  of  65,000,  100,000,  yea,  500,000 
acres.  Almost  all  available  lands  are  al- 
ready taken  out  of  the  reach  of  the  poor 
man  so  that  he  is  forced  to  live  in  the  city 
and  sell  his  labor  for  whatever  it  will  bring 
in  the  market,  and  be  worked  to  the  utmost 
limits  of  endurance  only  to  be  cast  aside  and 
discharged  when  worn-out.  The  rich  man's 
sons  and  daughters  dawdling  in  the  parks 
or  theatres,  sailing  in  their  yacht  or  inhaling 
the  genial  breezes,  the  poor  man's  son  and 
daughters  huddling  in  the  tenements,  in- 
haling pestilence,  running  the  streets,  or  if 
at  work  earning  barely  enough  to  purchase 
the  common  decencies  of  life.  Every  work- 
ing day  America  is  declared  to  be  four  mil- 
lion dollars  richer  at  night  than  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  yet  multitudes  go  in  rags,  an  army 
of  the  unemployed  is  tramping  up  and  down 
through  the  land,  and  every  day  the  news- 
papers tell  the  sad  tale  of  the  labor  troubles. 
"  It  is  true  we  are  free,  but  that  only  means 
we  are  let  loose  like  hounds  on  the  chase  in 
the  great  competitive  race  for  a  living,  a 
race  free  for  all  on  level  ground.  Nobody 
is  certain  of  his  future.  There  is  boundless 
scope  for  action,  but  some  always  fail.  There 
is  no  ambition  too  high,  but  most  are  disap- 
pointed. Nobody  is  contented  with  his  lot. 
The  rich  try  to  get  richer,  and  we,  the  wage 
earners,  are  never  sure  of  our  tasks  nor  of 
the  bread  and  meat  to  feed  the  hungry 
mouths  at  home.  In  the  heart  of  our  civil- 
ization our  women  faint  for  hunger,  our 


The  Complaint  of  the  Modern  Laborer.  89 

little  ones  cry  for  shelter  and  food,  and  we 
strong  men  are  despairing  while  abundance 
runs  to  waste.  The  whole  world  is  one 
grand  game  of  grab,  and  there  is  no  art  or 
method,  no  scheme  or  device,  no  collusion 
or  trickery  whio-h  is  not  brought  into  play. 
4  Our  master  is  our  enemy  '  is  the  conviction 
of  tenants  and  workmen  in  all  lands.  Cap- 
ital is  arrayed  against  labor,  the  opposing 
forces  are  marshalling  to  the  fray,  the  day  of 
conflict  draws  nearer  and  nearer.  These 
questions  can  be  decided  by  no  other  means 
than  by  the  sword  of  war."  * 

These  are  bitter  charges  made  to-day  by 
the  laborers  in  every  land.  Some  proclaim 
by  their  deeds  silently,  many  by  such  words 
boldly  and  defiantly,  that  all  these  charges 
are  to  be  laid  at  the  door  of  modern  society 
and  summary  vengeance  is  sooner  or  later  to 
be  taken  on  the  rich. 

You  know  the  whole  land  is  full  of  such 
cries.  Perhaps  you  are  impatient  with  them ; 
declare  them  to  be  foolish,  illogical ;  mere 
ranting,  empty  nonsense.  For  myself  I  will 
say  that  whatever  be  their  exaggerations 
and  fallacies,  I  am  not  one  of  those  who  will 
come  to  the  consideration  of  the  complaints 
of  the  workingman  with  the  monotonous, 
everlasting  lie  of  a  denial.  I  believe  that 
the  bow  of  promise  which  spanned  the 
morning  skies  of  the  nineteenth  century 
was  a  true  token  of  peace  ;  but  for  all  that, 
I  realize  that  its  promises  are  yet  far,  far 
from  having  been  fulfilled;  and  with  the 
laborer  I  see  many,  many  ills  in  present 
conditions,  but  bid  him  check  his  bitter 
wrath  and  turn  with  me  to  hear  the  message 
of  hope,  if  there  be  any,  and  to  study  the 
remedies  that  have  been  proffered. 

*  Socialism,  Starkweather  and  Wilson,  p.  4 


90  The  Social  Question. 


DISCOURSED. 

VIOLENCE  THE  PROPOSED    SOLUTION. 

THE  first  solution  of  the  social  question 
that  was  ever  proposed — which  is  still  pro- 
posed by  many  who  believe  the  complaint 
of  the  modern  laborer  to  be  true  in  all  its 
details,  is  violence — the  use  of  brute  force. 
"  The  misery  that  is  everywhere  prevalent," 
they  say,  "is  the  outcome  of  fatal  fallacies, 
everywhere  controlling.  The  existing  social 
order  is  rotten,"  they  cry,  "  rotten  to  the 
core.  It  must  be  extirpated  root  and  branch. 
This  is  the  remedy.  It  is  radical,  but  there 
is  no  other.  Therefore  set  your  blazing 
torches  to  the  four  corners  of  the  world,  let 
cities  and  towns  be  laid  waste;  raze  to  the 
ground  those  citadels  of  tyranny,  the  cham- 
bers of  Parliaments,  the  halls  of  Congress, 
the  court-houses  and  their  hellish  appendages, 
jails,  work-houses,  and  penitentiaries.  Put 
your  explosives  under  every  train  that  rum- 
bles through  the  land  ;  blow  up  the  million- 
aires and  scatter  their  millions.  Assassinate 
Kings,  Emperors,  Tzars  and  Presidents. 
Let  there  be  one  universal  conflagration, 
one  merciless  slaughter  of  the  oppressors. 
Down,  down,  into  the  pit  of  destruction 
with  this  whole  accursed  social  system,  this 
monster  of  iniquities,  born  of  the  depravity 
of  the  ages.  Then,  and  only  then,  upon 
the  heaps  of  gory  corpses,  and  up  out  of  the 
smoking  ashes  of  this  world-wide  desolation 
will  arise,  like  the  Phoenix,  a  new,  a  regen- 


Violence  the  Proposed  Solution         91 

erated,  a  perfect  social  system  true  to  nature 
and  her  primitive  laws  of  justice ;  then  at 
last  all  wrongs  will  be  righted,  and  there 
will  no  longer  be  any  oppression,  neither 
poverty  nor  misery  nor  woe,  and  the  discon- 
tented will  pass  from  off  the  face  of  the 
earth.'' 

Do  not  such  utterances  sound  to  you  like 
the  senseless  ravings  of  the  demented?  No 
man,  in  his  sense,  you  think,  could  make 
such  wild  and  horrifying  demands.  But  the 
fact  is  that  this  doctrine  of  violence  as  the 
sole  solution  of  the  social  question  has,  at 
one  time  or  another,  been  vociferously  pro- 
claimed from  the  very  housetops  in  almost 
every  land  of  the  globe.  Through  long 
years  of  seeming  peace,  subtle  conspiracies 
have,  with  their  poisonous  breath,  kept  the 
embers  of  the  revolutionary  fires  aglow,  so 
that  at  favorable  intervals  the  flames  of  de- 
struction might  burst  forth  in  those  murder- 
ous, infernal,  and  utterly  diabolical  plots 
and  villainies  which  have  shaken  the  world, 
and  the  dread  of  which  at  this  very  day 
hangs  like  a  threatening  cloud  upon  our 
horizon. 

Verify  all  this  by  the  testimony  of  history. 
Recall,  for  example,  the  famous  conspiracy 
of  Catiline  in  Rome,  47  B.  c.  Recall  the 
incessant  outbreaks  which  marked  the  decay 
and  downfall  of  the  social  structure  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  the  uprising  of  the  Jacqueries 
in  France,  the  revolt  under  Jack  Cade  in  Eng- 
land, and  the  bloody  peasant  wars  of  Ger- 
many. Annihilation,  the  complete  overthrow 
of  all  things,  was  their  slogan ;  violence 
their  mad  and  futile  principle  of  action. 

We  have  seen  how,  at  the  end  of  the  last 
century,  amid  the  pangs  and  tortures  of 
revolution,  political  equality  was  achieved. 


92  The  Social  Question. 

What  followed?  There  came  such  an 
awakening  of  the  minds  of  men,  such  a 
strange  and  irresistible  impulse  to  all  their 
aspirations  and  activities  that  life  was  en- 
tirely transformed  materially,  intellectually 
and  spiritually.  "  All  men  are  now  polit- 
ically equal,"  cried  those  in  the  van  of 
modern  progress,  "  why,  then,  shall  we  not 
achieve  social  and  economical  equality,  as 
well?  Is  it  not  our  right?  Who  shall  pre- 
vent? What  shall  hinder?" 

Thus  the  social  contest  followed  fast  upon 
the  heels  of  the  political.  Wise  men,  filled 
with  a  lofty  ideal  of  what  the  social  compact 
should  be,  saw  the  great  wave  of  distress 
sweep  across  the  sea  of  humanity,  submerg- 
ing the  thousands,  and  in  their  hearts  they 
bitterly  confessed  to  the  evils  which  the 
French  Revolution,  with  its  world-wide  in- 
fluence and  promise,  had  failed  to  remedy. 
Earnest  men,  true  and  sympathetic,  saw  the 
wave  of  bitter,  selfish  competition  come  roll- 
ing swiftly  and  mercilessly  after,  and  their 
hearts  bled  for  the  helpless  victims  of  the 
new  order,  ruthlessly  severed  from  old  ties 
of  patronage.  As  the  Israelites  of  old 
after  having  safely  passed  through  the  Red 
Sea  to  liberty,  clamored  for  a  return  to  the 
flesh-pots  of  Egypt,  so  they,  after  having 
passed  the  gory  sea  of  revolution  to  liberty, 
now  longed  for  a  return  of  the  good  old  days 
in  which  lord  and  vassal,  master  and  serf, 
had  been  bound  together,  had,  despite  their 
difference  in  rank,  felt  the  warm  pulsations 
of  a  sincere  attachment. 

Woe  was  added  to  woe  when  machinery 
came  and  drove  the  workmen  out  of  employ  ; 
left  their  families  to  starve  and  maddened 
them  with  the  rage  of  discontent.  The  limit 
of  endurance  was  reached.  Men  of  bold- 


Violence  the  Proposed  Solution.       93 

ness  and  daring,  but  debased  and  unscrupu- 
lous, cast  defiance  into  the  very  face  of  the 
law  itself,  and  afterward,  smarting  under 
its  penalties,  were  goaded  on  to  a  passion 
ate  and  avowed  enmity  to  all  the  insti- 
tutions of  civilization. 

Then  the  great  wave  of  violence  broke 
upon  the  shores  of  the  social  sea,  and  beat 
madly  against  the  towering  cliffs  called 
"  Tyranny  of  Capital,"  and  dashed  wildly 
against  the  mighty  Ship  of  State,  breaking 
its  rotten  beams  and  rafters,  and  wildly  tear- 
ing it  from  its  moorings.  From  the  high  seat 
of  the  revolutionists,  as  formerly  against  po- 
litical, so  now  against  social  wrongs,  the  doc- 
trine of  despair  was  proclaimed,  the  methods 
of  violence  were  sanctioned,  and  the  relent- 
less condemnation  of  all  things  to  subversion 
and  utter  ruin  was  pronounced. 

Out  of  the  slums  of  those  sunk  in  the  de- 
graded materialism  of  the  French  Revolution 
came  the  first  fanatic  who  preached  Anarchy 
in  the  modern  era — a  condemned  forger, 
named  Baboeuf,  who  for  more  than  twenty 
3^ears  lived  behind  the  prison  bars  of  France 
and  even  while  thus  confined  successfully  or- 
ganized a  conspiracy  to  overthrow  the  Gov- 
ernment and  establish  the  Social  millennium. 
Seventeen  thousand  men  were  secretly  en- 
rolled. Tracts  were  assiduously  circulated. 
The  manifesto  declared  "  The  end  of  the 
Revolution  is  to  destroy  inequality  and  es- 
tablish the  common  happiness We  are 

prepared  to  consent  to  everything  for  it 

Let  all  the  arts  perish,  if  need  be,  provided 
we  retain  real  equality.  In  a  true  society 
the  harmony  is  broken  if  one  man  in  the 
world  be  richer  or  more  powerful  than  his 
fellows." 

This  seems  very  absurd  and  foolish  talk, 


94  The  Social  Question. 

A  child  can  see  that  if  all  things  were  to  be 
divided  up  equally,  it  would  not  be  twenty- 
four  hours  before — under  existing  condi- 
tions— the  inequalities  would  all  be  restored. 
The  business  man's  refutation  of  commu- 
nism is  simply  that  given  by  one  of  the  Roths- 
childs of  Frankfort-on-the  Main.  Once  hear- 
ing a  poor  man  complain  of  his  lot  and  ex- 
press a  desire  for  the  equality  of  commu- 
ism,  Rothschild  is  said  to  have  immediately 
put  his  hand  in  his  pocket,  drawn  out  a  few 
shillings  and  ,offered  them,  saying :  "  This 
would  be  your  full  share  if  the  wealth  of  a 
Rothschild  was  to  be  equally  divided  among 
all  the  inhabitants  of  Germany."  * 

But  this  was  not  what  the  communists 
proposed.  They  were  not  so  childish.  Ba- 
boeuf  did  not  propose  it.  He  would  have  all 
to  be  equal,  that  is,  none  in  command  and 
none  in  subjection.  Therefore,  no  govern- 
ment, that  is,  anarchy :  those  administering 
the  law  to  be  no  better  than  the  rest,  all  neces- 
sary offices  to  be  held  in  rotation  without 
especial  honor  or  emolument.  There  should 
be  no  rich  or  poor ;  therefore  private  prop- 
erty must  be  abolished,  all  the  people  re- 
duced to  uniformity,  live  in  the  same  man- 
ner, eat  the  same  kind  of  food,  dress 
alike,  receive  the  same  education,  do  such 
equal  shares  of  work  as  the  law  would  parcel 
out  to  each.  Can  you  think  of  anything 
more  dreary,  stupid  and  deadening  than  such 
a  scheme  for  lowering  all  abilities,  tal- 
ents, ambitions,  and  endeavors  to  the  same 
dead  level  of  mediocrity?  No  nation  ever 
has,  none  ever  will,  for  none  ever  can  in- 
stitute such  a  system.  It  is  revolting,  de- 
basing, in  manifest  defiance  -of  the  laws  of 

*  Cited  by    Prof.  Ely,  French  and  German  Social- 
ism. 


Violence  the  Proposed  Solution.        95 

God  stamped  in  the  human  soul  and  express- 
ed through  our  ceaseless  striving  after  better- 
ment. 

The  conspiracy  of  Baboeuf  failed.  One 
of  its  leaders  turned  traitor,  Baboeuf  was 
guillotined  March  24, 1797,  and  his  confreres 
punished.  The  firm  hand  of  Napoleon  I. 
checked  every  further  outbreak  of  violence 
against  the  social  regime. 

In  1840  there  appeared  in  France  a  book 
entitled  What  is  Property  ?  and  containing 
the  startling  answer,  "  Property  is  theft. 
Property-holders  are  thieves."  The  author 
was  Pierre  Joseph  Proudhon,  a  man  of  the 
people,  a  self-made  man,  as  we  say  ;  a  man 
of  brilliant  parts,  a  fervid  writer,  of  dauntless 
courage  and  undoubted  sincerity.  His  writ- 
ings mark  a  new  era  in  the  history  of  "  Vio- 
lence as  a  Solution  of  the  Social  Question." 
He  emphatically  opposed  every  socialistic 
scheme  hitherto  proposed,  and  came  out 
bluntly  and  boldly  for  anarchy,  pure  and 
simple.  "  I  will  destroy  and  I  will  build  up." 
was  the  motto  he  set  before  himself ;  but,  as 
is  usually  the  case,  while  he  was"  a  mighty 
giant  in  tearing  clown,  he  was  a  weak  and 
puny  dwarf  in  the  task  of  restoring.  He 
proposed  but  failed  to  carry  a  bill  through 
the  National  Assembly  of  France,  offering 
a  vague  and  impracticable  banking  scheme 
to  effect  the  exchange  of  product  for  pro- 
duct by  means  of  paper  money.  Interest 
and  profit  were  thus  to  be  abolished.  All 
things  were  to  be  had  at  cost ;  there  was  to 
be  credit  for  everybody  at  the  Government 
banks.  Private  property  must  be  confiscated, 
yet  there  was  to  be  no  authority,  no  govern- 
ment, that  is,  anarchy.  "  To  each  one  ac- 
cording to  his  capacity  ;  to  each  capacity  ac- 
cording to  his  works  "—this  was  adopted  as 


96  The  Social  Question. 

the  guiding  principle  of  his  system.  It  means, 
as  far  as  it  is  explicable  to  us,  absolute  un- 
qualified individualism,  and  yet  every  indi- 
vidual to  have  a  just  share  in  the  production 
and  in  the  consumption  of  all  goods,  and 
this  without  communism  of  any  kind.  Here 
is  a  flat  contradiction,  and  impossibility. 
Nevertheless  from  this  confusion  and  con- 
tradictory source  the  ideas  of  all  the  anarch- 
ists from  his  time  until  the  present  hour 
have  been  drawn. 

Proudhon  hated  the  rich  heartily.  Harsh- 
ly and  bitterly  he  attacked  them.  But 
unlike  Babceuf  he  was  not  a  conspirator. 
He  turned  his  back  upon  every  scheme  of 
revolution  by  violence.  But  this  is  simply 
another  of  his  contradictions  and  a  failure  to 
face  the  logical  issue  and  natural  extreme  of 
his  own  philosophy.  The  revolution  in 
1848  which  placed  Napoleon  III.  on  the 
throne  of  France ;  the  memorable  commu- 
nistic revolt  of  1871,  which  followed  up 
Napoleon's  deposition — these  are  in  part  at 
last,  without  doubt,  the  fruit  of  his  planting. 

The  year  1848  was  a  blazing  torch  at  which 
the  Anarchists  of  all  European  lands  lit  the 
fire-brands  of  social  revolution.  The  Chart- 
ist movement  in  England,  the  Communistic 
manifesto  of  Marx,  and  the  rise  of  the  "  In- 
ternational" (Workingmen's  Association)  in 
Germany,  the  efforts  of  Weithling  and 
Becker  in  Switzerland,  the  numberless  agi- 
tations in  Spain,  all  these  kin  died  their  flame 
from  the  fires  lit  by  Proudhon  in  France. 

The  most  radical  apostle  of  the  doctrine 
of  violence  was  undoubtedly  Bakunin,  the 
father  of  Russian  Nihilism — a  mystical,  ex- 
travagant, audacious  character,  in  whom 
devotion  to  the  revolutionary  idea  had  run 
into  the  blindest  fanaticism,  "  Everything 


Violence  the  Proposed  Solution.        97 

is  moral,"  says  the  Nihilistic  catechism, 
"  which  helps  on  the  triumph  of  the  revolu- 
tion, everything  is  immoral  and  criminal 
that  hinders  it "  *  Admitting  no  activity 
but  that  of  destruction — assassination,  in- 
cendiarism, poison,  poniard,  rope  and  ex- 
plosions * —  all  means  are  sanctified  and 
are  in  use  at  this  very  day  in  Russia, 
as  you  well  know  and  as  you  may  read 
of  in  those  strange  books  of  startling 
revelations^  Russia  Under  the  Tsars  and 
Underground  Russia,  by  Stepniak,  who  is 
pronounced  reliable  by  competent  authori- 
ties. 

I  have  reviewed  all  this  history  of  violence 
in  order  that  we  may  see  just  where  we 
stand  in  reference  to  it.  For  the  discon- 
tented spirits  of  all  lands  America  has  be- 
come a  refuge,  and  so  we  find  here,  in  strange 
companionship,  adherents  of  every  phase  of 
those  fantasic  systems,  romantic  plots,  wild 
vagaries,  and  fanatic  schemes  of  revolution- 
ary communism,  anarchy,  and  nihilism,  that 
under  the  Old  World  conditions  have  been 
conceived  and  brought  into  being.  Prof.  Ely, 
of  Johns  Hopkins  University,  in  his  latest 
earnest  and  exhaustive  work,  The  Labor 
Movement  in  America,  estimates  the  number 
of  those  in  the  United  States  who  believe  in 
violence  as  the  social  remedy,  at  more  than 
ten  thousand. 

The  latest  and  most  violent  proof  of  their 
existence  was  given  in  Chicago  on  the  4th 
of  May,  1886,  when  a  deadly  bomb  was 
thrown  into  the  ranks  of  the  police.  They 
gave  evidence  of  their  purpose,  methods  and 
power  ten  years  ago  in  the  great  riot  of  1877, 
in  which  one  hundred  millions  of  dollars 
worth  of  property  was  wantonly  wasted  and 

*  Emile  de  Laveley,  Socialism  of  to-day.  Ch.  x. 
7 


98  The  Social  Question. 

many  innocent  lives  lost.  There  are  a  great 
many  books,  papers,  and  periodicals  pub- 
lished by  them  ;  a  great  many  public  meet- 
ings are  held  under  their  auspices,  and  ha- 
rangues delivered  to  sympathetic  audiences. 
Through  all  their  papers,  speeches,  books, 
and  resolutions  runs  one  refrain-:  "Get 
ready  for  another  1 877 — buy  a  musket  for  the 
repetition  of  1877."  "  Organize  companies 
and  drill  for  a  recurrence  of  the  riots  of 
1877."  "  Buy  dynamite  for  a  second  1877." 
This  is  the  substance  of  the  speeches  of  Herr 
Most  and  of  Mrs.  Lucy  Parsons. 

I  cite  all  this  not  as  a  sound  of  alarm,  for 
I  see  no  danger  which  can  not  be  averted  or 
met,  but  as  a  note  of  warning  to  every  true- 
hearted  American  workman,  whether  born 
on  this  soil  or  having  adopted  this  glorious 
country  as  his  home,  whether  hand-worker 
or  brain-worker,  to  all  I  say,  as  a  public 
teacher  and  speaking  as  the  exponent  of  all 
that  is  sacred  :  stand  firm,  keep  pure  and  un- 
defiled  your  loyalty  to  God,  religion  and  law ; 
guard  against  the  un-American  influence  of 
loud  and  erratic  agitators  and  Revolutionists. 
Welcome  all  freely  to  the  privileges  you  en- 
joy, but  hold  fast  to  your  integrity.  With 
our  Rabbis  I  say :  "  Love  peace,  pursue 
peace,"  but  that  means  eschew  violence  for 
violence  is  a  relic  of  barbarism,  which  unless 
we  prove  that  we  have  outgrown  it,  gives 
the  lie  to  our  boasted  civilization. 

Look  then  to  the  methods  of  these  strikes 
that  are  springing  up  everywhere  with  a 
mushroom  growth.  "  Strikes  are  the  insur- 
rections of  labor,"  says  Professor  Walker.  * 
Their  motive  may  be  just,  but  if  their  method 
be  violence  then  they  are  un-American,  they 
are  unholy,  they  are  sinful.  I  have  shown 
*The  Wages  Question,  p.  390, 


Violence  the  Proposed  Solution.       99 

you  their  ancestry.  They  are  the  offspring 
of  the  logic  of  Anarchy — the  blind  progeny 
of  giant  error.  If  you  can  not  get  that 
price  for  your  labor  which  you  see  fit  to  ask, 
you  have  neither  in  reason  nor  in  right  any 
cause  for  therefore  attacking  your  employer 
or  the  man  who  will  take  less  for  his  work 
— no  more  right  than  the  man  who  asks  you 
ten  dollars  for  a  coat  has  a  right  to  abuse 
you  if  you  decline  to  pay  it.  Smashing 
cars,  breaking  up  machinery,  ruining  fac- 
tories and  mills,  looting  stores,  interfering 
with  trade,  burning,  pillaging,  abusing  and 
murdering  those  who  are  willing  to  work,  and 
injuring  their  families  and  yours — all  this  is 
suicidal.  Mark  this : — 

"  New  For  A:,  February  12,  188.7— Bradstreet's  makes 
the  following  estimates  of  losses,  the  result  of  strikes, 
in  this  country  since  January  1st :  Wages  sacrificed  by 
strikers,  $2,650,000  ;  loss  of  wages  to  employes  thrown 
out  of  work  by  strikers  of  fellow-workmen,  $350,000  ; 
losses  to  trade  and  through  the  increased  price  of  coal, 
etc.,  #4,280,000,  total,  $7,280,000." 

Such  is  a  sample  of  the  results  of  violence 
as  a  solution  to  the  social  question.  But 
this  folly  will  soon  wear  itself  out.  The  day 
is  fast  approaching  when  the  free  American 
workman  will  look  back  upon  this  scandal 
in  shame,  and  though  uniting  with  all  labor- 
ers for  mutual  good,  will  refuse  to  sell  him- 
self body  and  soul  into  any  new  servitude, 
such  as  the  strikes  require,  but  will  rise  in 
the  might  of  his  manhood  and  range  himself 
on  the  side  of  law  and  order,  thrift  and 
peace.  To  hasten  that  day  I  speak  because  I 
feel  it  to  be  a  solemn  task,  a  sacred  duty 
which  devolves  upon  me  as  it  rests  upon 
every  earnest  teacher  of  religion,  every  sin- 
cere champion  of  God,  every  true  lover  of 


100  The  Social  Question. 

his  fellow-men.  As  a  teacher  in  Israel  it 
behooves  me  most  emphatically  to  proclaim 
that  Judaism  unequivocally  puts  the  stamp 
of  condemnation  upon  violence  as  a  solu- 
tion of  the  social  question. 


Socialism.  101 


DISCOURSE  XL 

SOCIALISM. 

A  THOROUGHGOING  and  practical  solution 
of  the  great  Social  Question  has  been  put 
forth  on  the  basis  of  what  claims  to  be  a 
clearly  reasoned  scientific  criticism  of  the 
industrial  system  of  to-day.  This  solution 
is  broadly  termed  Socialism.  An  ominous 
word  is  this — "  a  name  at  which  the  world 
turns  pale."  It  is  usually  supposed  to  sub- 
sume and  embrace  all  possible  schemes  and 
plots  aiming  at  a  social  revolution,  and  to 
be  synonymous  with  whatever  is  dangerous, 
lawless,  subversive,  and  ruinous. 

This  its  leaders  aver  is  a  mistaken  impres- 
sion. Modern  Socialism,  it  is  true,  is  thor- 
oughly revolutionary,  that  is,  it  aims  to 
completely  overthrow  existing  social  con- 
ditions for  the  purpose  of  supplanting  them 
with  other  and  better  ones,  which  shall  for- 
ever undo  the  evils  of  inequality  under 
which  we  now  suffer,  cut  its  methods  are 
to  be  peaceable,  legal,  legitimate.  Violence 
is  not  on  its  programme.  It  refuses  to  be 
allied  with  anarchy  or  nihilism,  however 
much  the  mad  adherents  of  those  murderous 
methods  may  pretend  to  be  enrolled  under 
its  ensign. 

This  is  certainly  a  fair  promise  and  wins 
our  eager  attention.  There  is  another  fact 
which  intensifies  our  interest  still  more.  It 
is  this : 

That  which  is  rightfully  called  Socialism 


102  The  Social  Question. 

is  unquestionably  the  product  of  the  Jewish 
spirit;-  Its  authors  were  men  of  Jewish  ex- 
ir&etioh.  Commenting  upon  this  fact,  Emile 
de  Laveleye,  says  :  "  The  Jews  have  been 
nearly  everywhere  the  initiators  or  prop- 
agators of  Socialism.  The  reason  is  plain. 
Socialism  is  an  energetic  protest  against  the 
iniquitous  basis  of  the  actual  order  of  things, 
and  an  ardent  aspiration  toward  a  better 
system  where  justice  would  reign  supreme. 
Now,  this  is  precisely  the  foundation  of  the 
Judaism  of  Job  and  the  Prophets.  .  .  . 
In  the  Jewish  conception  of  the  world, 
it  is  here  below  that  the  greatest  possible 
amount  of  justice  should  be  realized."* 

M.  Ernest  Renan  in  the  preface  of  his 
recent  translation  of  Ecclesiastes  explains 
this  by  a  contrast.  He  says  :  "  The  Jew  is 
not  resigned  like  the  Christian.  To  the 
Christian,  poverty  and  humility  are  virtues, 
while  to  the  Jew  they  are  misfortunes  to  be 
avoided.  Abuse  and  violence,  which  rind 
the  Christian  calm,  enrage  the  Jew.  Hence 
it  is  that  the  Israelite  element  has  in  our 
time  become  an  influence  of  reform  and 
progress  in  all  countries  where  it  is  to  be 
found.  .  .In  the  revolutionary  move- 
ments of  France  the  Jewish  element  played 
an  important  part." 

To  these  citations  I  would  add,  that, 
while  Christianity  directs  the  eyes  of  its 
votaries  continuously  toward  the  life  to 
come,  Judaism,  although  none  the  less  anx- 
ious about  the  hereafter,  makes  "  how  to 
live "  precede  the  question,  "  how  to  die," 
and  insists  upon  the  correct  solution  of  the 
former  as  the  only  true  solution  of  the  lat- 
ter. It  is  because  of  the  fundamental  dif- 
ference thus  indicated  that  Judaism  is  ex- 

*  The  Socialism  of  To-day.  p,45. 


Socialism.  103 

empt  from  the  charge  often  made  against 
the  Christian  church,  that  it  is  dumb  in 
matters  which  challenge  the  animosity  of 
wealth  and  power ;  the  charge  that  the  gaunt 
and  meager  spectre  of  secularism  scares  it 
off  from  every  endeavor  to  enlarge  the 
sphere  of  righteousness.* 

It  is  this  sober,  common-sense  method  of 
living  in  the  world  and  being  of  it,  in  order 
to  ennoble  and  improve  its  conditions,  which 
has  helped  Judaism  to  endure,  and  it  is  this 
trait  which  accounts  for  the  fact  that,  as  in 
all  previous  ages,  so  to-day,  many  of  the 
master  minds  who  have  lent  their  energies 
to  these  absorbing  contentions  of  real  life, 
happen  to  be  products  of  the  spirit  of  Juda- 
ism. Three  Jewish  names  present  them- 
selves on  the  first  page  of  the  history  of 
modern  socialism.  These  are  David  Ricardo, 
Ferdinand  Lasalle  and  Karl  Marx. 

David  Ricardo  personally  had  no  connec- 
tion with  the  socialistic  movement  whatever. 
He  was  a  London  stock-broker  (1772-1823). 
He  devoted  himself  to  a  serious  study  of  the 
principles  underlying  those  transactions  in 
which  he  was  daily  engaged,  and  eventually 
achieved  lasting  recognition  as  a  profound 
scholar  and  a  lucid  writer  on  questions 
of  political  economy.  He  followed  Adam 
Smith  and  the  "  orthodox "  economists  in 
his  teachings,  and  among  his  successors 
James  Mill  and  J.  R.  McCullough  acknowl- 
edge themselves  to  be  his  disciples. 

The  name  of  Ricardo  heads  the  school  of 
modern  Socialism  because  a  theory  of  labor 
and  of  wages  which  he  formulated  and  which 
bears  his  name  became  the  starting  point — 

*Behrends,  Socialism  and  Christianity;  Brown, 
Studies  in  Modern  Socialism,  ch.  I.  Socialism, 
Starkweather  and  Wilson,  p.  32. 


104  The  Social  Question. 

the  casus  belli — the  very  weapon  of  attack 
against  existing  institutions  for  those  who 
became  the  founders  of  the  new  system. 
Ricardo's  theories  were  simply  a  deduction 
from  the  teachings  of  his  predecessors  and 
were  until  of  late  universally,  almost  un- 
»questioningly  adopted.  He  declared  that 
labor  is  the  foundation  of  all  value.  From 
this  the  Socialists  infer  that  all  wealth  should 
belong  to  the  laborers.  The  wages  theory 
has  been  very  graphically,  although  not 
very  technically  described  by  Joseph  Cook 
as  the  see-saw  theory,  because  it  asserts  the 
relations  between  labor  and  capital  to  be 
such  that  as  the  laborer  goes  down  the  capi- 
talist goes  up,  and  as  the  laborer  goes  up 
the  capitalist  goes  down.  That  is,  the  value 
of  labor  depends  upon  how  much  it  costs  to 
keep  the  laborer  according  to  his  customary 
standard  of  living.  Wages  may  fall  below 
or  rise  above  this,  but  will  always  tend 
toward  a  return  to  that  gauge.  When  they 
rise,  the  laborers  being  prosperous,  will  be 
encouraged  to  marry ;  thus  eventually  their 
numbers  will  increase  to  such  a  degree  that 
by  reason  of  the  intensity  of  competition  the 
rate  of  wages  will  again  fall.  Then  will 
come  starvation,  increase  of  mortality,  a  dec- 
imnation  of  their  numbers  until  by  reason 
of  there  being  fewer  workmen,  wages  will 
again  rise.  And  so  there  is  a  constant  up 
and  down,  see-saw  process  extending  through 
long  years  of  time. 

This,  in  brief  outline,  is  Ricardo's  theory  of 
wages.  Ricardo  himself  was,  in  all  probabil- 
ity, not  conscious  of  what,  in  its  fullest  and 
broadest  application,  his  theory  must  lead 
to.  Other  men  looked  deeper.  There  came 
Ferdinand  Lasalle,  a  German,  born  at  Bres- 
lau,  1825,  a  brilliant  university  man,  a  friend 


Socialism.  105 

of  the  Mendelssohns  in  Berlin,  dubbed 
Wunderkind,  "prodigy"  by  Alexander  von 
Humboldt,  an  intimate  friend  of  Heinrieh 
Heine  when  in  Paris, — ".a  child  of  the  new 
era  " — admired  and  courted  by  Bismarck. 
He  looks  into  the  theory,  and  behold  !  he 
revolts  against  it ;  he  avers  that  it  means  that 
the  workman  has  been  released  from  serfdom 
only  to  be  put  into  the  bondage  of  an  in- 
exorable economical  law.  Das  JEherne  Lohn- 
gesetz,  "  the  iron  and  cruel  law  of  wages," 
which  keeps  him  forever  from  bettering 
his  condition  or  from  reaping  any  reward 
from  the  increased  productivity  of  his  own 
hands.  The  existing  regime  is  therefore, 
wrong,  thoroughly  iniquitous  from  apex  to 
base.  It  must  be  subverted.  An  entirely 
new  social  system  must  be  instituted. 

Thus  Socialism  comes  into  being  avowing 
itself  the  natural  and  indomitable  foe  of  the 
"  tyranny  of  capital."  What  remedy  does  it 
offer  ?  "  Supply  the  laborer  with  capital  and 
make  him  independent  of  the  degrading 
wage  system."  But  who  shall  supply  the 
capital  ?  How  shall  it  be  obtained  ?  "  Noth- 
ing easier,"  answers  Lasalle.  "  The  State  ad- 
vances capital  to  start  railways,  to  develop 
agriculture,  promote  manufacture.  Why 
shall  it  not  furnish  the  poor  man  with  capital? 
Ninety-six  per  cent,  of  the  population  are 
ground  down  by  the  '  iron  law,'  and  can  not 
lift  themselves  above  it  by  their  own  power. 
The  State  must  help  them.  Organize  then, 
and  agitate  for  universal  suffrage,  and 
through  the  ballot-box  vote  yourselves  the  . 
help  you  need."  This  was  his  doctrine,  and 
he  went  up  and  down  the  country  preaching 
it,  as  it  were,  at  every  village  and  cross-road. 
It  is  said  that  he  exercised  a  fascination  like 
Abelard,  charming  women  and  fascinating 


106  The  Social  Question. 

crowds.  Young,  handsome  and  eloquent, 
"  drawing  the  hearts  of  all  after  him,"  he  left 
enthusiastic  disciples  and  admirers  every- 
where who  formed  the  nucleus  of  working- 
man's  societies.  Thus  the  energy  of  his  style, 
the  rigor  of  his  polemics,  and  to  a  still 
greater  degree  his  eloquence  and  personal 
influence  brought  socialism  from  the  regions 
of  dreamy  philanthropy  and  obscure  books, 
little  read,  less  understood,  to  throw  it  like 
a  firebrand  of  strife  and  dispute  into  the 
public  streets  and  into  the  workshops. 
"  There  is  no  example,"  sa}^s  Emile  de  Lave- 
leye  "  in  our  times  of  an  influence  so  great 
and  so  extended  acquired  in  so  short  a 
period.* 

Suddenly,  and  before  he  had  done  more 
than  merely  to  evoke  that  intense  agitation 
which  brought  into  being  the  Democratic 
Socialistic  party  in  Germany,  after  only  two 
years  of  active  effort  in  this  cause,  Lasalle 
came  to  an  untimely  end  in  a  duel  brought 
about  by  an  unhappy  love  affair.  If  during  his 
life  he  was  listened  to  like  an  oracle,  after  his 
death,  says  the  annalist,  he  was  venerated  as 
a  demi-god.  His  body  was  conveyed  from 
Switzerland  back  to  Germany.  Everywhere 
pompous  funerals  were  held.  At  Cologne, 
however,  it  was  intercepted  by  the  police  on 
behalf  of  the  Lasalle  family  and  carried 
quietly  to  Breslau,  where  he  was  laid  silent- 
ly with  his  fathers  in  the  Jewish  burying- 
ground  of  his  native  place.  "  Fate,  however, 
had*  not  yet  done  with  him,"  says  Mr.  John 
Rae.f  "  It  followed  him  beyond  the  tomb 
to  throw  one  more  element  of  bizarre  into 
his  strangely  compounded  career."  The 
Workingmen's  Association,  fearing  that 

*  Socialism  of  To-day,  Ch.  v. 
t  Contemporary  Socialism,  p.  80. 


Socialism.  107 

their  cause  would  fail,  determined  to 
strengthen  it  by  his  death.  A  Lasalle  cultus 
was  instituted.  He  was  worshiped  as  the 
Messiah  of  Socialism.  Many  really  believed 
that  he  had  died  for  them,  and  would  yet  be 
resurrected  and  save  them.  In  1874  the  tenth 
anniversary  of  the  day  of  his  death  was 
celebrated  with  ceremonies  almost  like  those 
of  a  new  religion.  He  was  likened  to  the 
Christian  Saviour  ;  it  was  avowed  that  his 
doctrines  would  reform  society  as  Chris- 
tianity had  reformed  the  pagan  world.  These 
aberrations  of  the  Socialists  were  kept  up  in 
Germany  until  the  Anti-Socialist  law  of  1878 
brought  them  to  an  end. 

While  Lasalle  was  spreading  the  new 
gospel  by  word  of  mouth  with  flaming  speech- 
es, and  by  means  of  fiery  pamphlets,  Karl 
Marx  was  laboring  effectively  in  another 
way.  Persecuted  because  of  his  opinions, 
he  lead  the  life  of  a  roving  exile,  passing 
from  Germany  to  France,  from  France  to 
Brussels,  and  back  again  to  Germany,  until 
he  at  last  found  a  haven  of  rest  in  London, 
where  he  died  in  1883.  In  all  the  years 
from  manhood  to  death  his  pen  was  busy. 
He  figured  as  a  journalist  and  author.  He 
stands  indisputably  as  the  greatest  social- 
istic writer  of  Germany,  perhaps  of  the 
world.  His  chief  work,  Das  Kapital,  is 
called  the  Bible  of  Socialism.  All  the 
Socialist  agitators  draw  their  ideas  and  their 
fervor  from  it — swear  by  it,  so  to  speak. 
It  is  conceded  to  be  an  able,  in  many 
respects  a  remarkable,  work.  The  reader 
feels  himself  "  shut  up  within  the  iron  bars 
of  his  logic,  as  it  were,  a  prey  to  a  nightmare 
because  having  admitted  his  premises, 
which  are  borrowed  from  the  most  undoubted 
authorities,  we  know  not  how  to  escape  from 


108  The  Social  Question. 

his  conclusions.  .  .  And  yet,  when  we  go  to 
the  bottom  of  the  matter  and  look  around  us, 
we  perceive  that  we  have  been  enveloped 
in  a  skillful  tissue  of  errors  and  subtleties 
intermingled  with  a  few  truths."  * 

We  need  not  go  into  a  detailed  consider- 
ation of  his  argument.  Its  theories  found  a 
tangible  and  living  expression  through  the 
organization  and  efforts  of  the  Internation 
al  Workingmen's  Association,  which  had  a 
brief  but  brilliant  meteoric  existence  from 
1864  to  1872.  Let  a  late  manifesto  of  the 
English  leaders  of  this  movement  speak  and 
tell  us  what,  in  substance,  Socialism  demands. 
It  says :  "  All  wealth  is  due  to  labor,  there- 
fore to  the  laborer  all  wealth  is  due.  We  call 
for  the  nationalization  of  land.  We  claim 
that  the  land,  in  country  and  towns,  mines, 
parks,  mountains  and  moors,  should  be 
owned  by  the  people,  for  the  people,  to  be 
held,  used,  built  over  and  cultivated  upon 
such  terms  as  the  people  themselves  see  fit 
to  ordain.  Above  all  the  active  capitalist 
class — contractors,  factory-lords,  mine-ex- 
ploiters, these  modern  slave-drivers,  these  are 
they  who  turn  every  advance  in  knowledge 
and  every  improvement  in  dexterity  into  an 
engine  for  accumulating  wealth  out  of  other 
men's  labors,  and  for  exacting  more  and 
more  surplus  value  out  of  the  wage-slaves 
whom  they  employ.  So  long  as  the  means 
of  production,  either  of  raw  materials  or 
manufactured  goods,  are  the  monopoly  of  a 
class,  so  long  must  the  laborers  on  the 
farms,  in  the  mines,  or  in  the  factory,  sell 
themselves  for  a  bare  subsistence  wage.  As 
land  must  in  future  be  a  national  possession, 
so  must  the  other  means  of  producing  and 
distributing  wealth.  By  these  means  a 

*  The  Socialism  of  To-day,  E.  de  Laveleye,  p.  32. 


Socialism.  109 

healthy  independentand  thoroughly  educated 
people  will  steadily  grow  up  around  us  ready 
to  organize  the  labor  of  each  for  the  benefit 
of  all,  and  determined  to  take  finally  the 
control  of  the  entire  social  and  political 
machinery  of  a  state,  in  which  class  distinc- 
tions and  privileges  shall  cease  to  be."* 

With  the  lofty  purpose  of  ruling  the  world 
by  the  principle  of  brotherly  love,  and  with 
the  watchword  "  Proletarians  of  all  nations 
unite !  "  The  "  International "  fell  apart  by 
reason  of  the  unbrotherly  hatred  of  its 
members.  They  could  only  unite  on  negative 
or  destructive  principles ;  when  arrested  and 
persecuted  they  were  at  once  bound  together 
by  an  iron  bond  of  negation,  but  the  moment 
they  were  let  alone  and  free  to  act,  free  to 
accomplish  some  positive,  constructive  act, 
they  differed  and  quarreled.  There  were 
charges  of  bribery  and  treason,  accusations 
and  suspicions  which  brought  on  the  inevita- 
disruption  and  end. 

But  though  this  society  is  dead,  it  lives 
in  other  organizations,  and  the  ideas  of 
Socialism  are  more  widespread  to-day  than 
ever  before.  An  analysis  of  their  merits 
and  demerits  of  their  truths  and  fallacies, 
must  be  reserved  for  the  next  discourse. 

*  Hallock  Property  and  Progress^  pp.98,  99. 


110  The  Social  Question. 


DISCOURSE  XII. 

SOCIALISM  (Continued.) 

IN  the  ancient  mythologies  Justice  is 
represented  as  a  women  blindfolded,  who 
holds  in  one  hand  a  pair  of  scales  in  which 
she  metes  out  all  things  with  equal  balances, 
while  in  the  other  hand  she  firmly  grasps  a 
sword,  threatening  destruction  to  whomso- 
ever should  dare  to  gainsay  her  apportion- 
ments. Upon  her  lips  is  the  rigorous  maxim 
Fiat  justitia  per  eat  mundus  ! — "  Let  justice 
be  done,  though  the  world  should  perish  !  " 
Such  is  the  pagan  conception  of  Justice — 
harsh,  forbidding,  unfeeling,  utterly  devoid 
of  the  heavenly  graces  of  mercy  and  love. 

With  us  justice  means  something  quite 
different.  It  is  true  Judaism  does  not 
permit  any  such  an  embodiment  of  her 
teachings.  We  have  only  words  in  which 
to  express  them,  but  the  word  that  expresses 
the  Jewish  idea  of  justice  is  synonymous 
with,  is  the  very  same  word  which  expresses 
the  idea  of  benevolence  viz  :  Zedakali,  and 
which  carries  with  it  at  the  same  time  the 
sense  of  moral  freedom  and  of  holiness. 
The  maxim  of  active  justice  as  pursued  by 
the  Hebrew  is  best  uttered  by  the  Prophet  :* 
Have  I  any  pleasure  in  the  death  of  the 
wicked?  saith  the  Lord  God  :  and  not  rather 
that  he  should  return  from  his  way  and  live  ?" 
And  as  opposed  to  the  destroying  sword  of 

xvn,  23, 


Socialism.  Ill 

Justitia  the  Rabbins  taught  that  justice 
sustains  the  world  aided  by  truth  and  peace.* 
In  so  far  as  Socialism  conforms  to  the 
divine  idea  of  justice  we  believe  that  Socialism 
is  right ;  in  so  far  as  it  conforms  to  the  Pagan 
idea,  we  believe  that  Socialism  is  wrong.  In 
so  far  as  Socialism  is  a  vigorous  protest 
against  whatever  is  iniquitous  in  the  exist- 
ing social  order  and  voices  an  ardent  aspira- 
tion after  better  conditions,  Judasim  is  at 
one  with  it.  It  approves  and  loudly  ap- 
plauds the  successful  efforts  of  the  new 
school  to  unmask  and  reveal  the  hideous 
features  of  oppression  ;  to  lay  bare  the  heart- 
lessness  of  unfeeling  and  unprincipled  mas- 
ters ;  to  expose  the  roguery  that  fastens  up- 
on our  institutions ;  to  dethrone  bankruptcy, 
bribery,  every  form  of  political  and  com- 
mercial corruption  which  pompously  usurps 
the  seat  of  respectability.  Its  most  ardent 
approval  does  Socialism  win  from  our  re- 
ligion when,  with  an  eloquence  that  is  the 
very  passion  of  pathos,  it  pleads  the  cause  of 
the  needy,  of  the  strong  struggling  for  life, 
and  the  weak  clamoring  for  aid  ;  and,  above 
all,  when  with  clarion  tones  of  command  it 
calls  for  the  fair  reward  of  his  labors  to  every 
one  according  to  his  toil.  In  all  these  re- 
spects we  are  with  the  Socialists,  for  with 
us  they  are  on  the  side  of  right  against 
wrong,  on  the  side  of  all  that  our  Pro- 
phets proclaimed  in  the  inspiration  of 
oratory ;  that  our  sacred  bards  rapturously 
chanted  under  the  spell  of  their  heavenly 
muse  ;  that  our  sages  so  earnestly  fostered 
with  the  full  devotion  of  their  life's  best  en- 
ergies ;  that  all  our  legal  codes  from  Moses' 
down  were  so  zealously  striving  to  estab- 
lish ;  and  for  the  Attainment  of  which 
*Aboth.  I . 


112  The  Social  Question. 

the  records  of  martyrdom  were  inscribed  in 
letters  of  blood  upon  every  page  of  our  proud 
history  of  unending  endurance. 

Is  Judaism  then  in  perfect  accord  with 
Socialism  ?  In  its  honest  underlying  motives 
— yes,  but  in  the  methods  which  Socialism 
proposes  for  putting  these  aspirations  after 
betterment  into  living,  active  form  among 
men — no.  Why  is  this  so  ?  Because  in  the 
former  Socialism'  yields  obedience  to  the 
Jewish  conception  of  Justice,  but  in  the  latter 
it  has  prostrated  itself  before  the  pagan 
goddess,  has  taken  the  sword  from  her  hand 
and  the  watchword  from  her  lips  proclaiming 
the  revolution  in  that  heartless  fiat :  "  Let 
justice  be  done,  and  since  it  must  be,  let 
this  whole  world  perish — this  whole  accursed 
social  system  that  so  ruthlessly  and  hope- 
lessly oppresses  us  !  "  At  these  words  Juda- 
ism must  let  fall  the  hand  that  had  been 
warmly  grasped,  and  give  up  the  fellowship 
in  the  cause  of  righteousness  to  which  joy- 
fully she  would  have  allied  herself. 

It  avails  naught  for  the  professors  of  Social- 
ism to  avow  that  while  they  are  revolution- 
ary in  their  teachings,  they  mean  to  be  peace- 
able in  their  methods,  and  that  State-Social- 
ism is  utterly  opposed  to  violence.  They 
are  hugging  a  delusion.  Lasalle  himself  de- 
clared :  "  I  am  persuaded  that  a  revolution 
will  take  place.  It  will  take  place  legally, 
and  with  all  the  blessings  of  freedom,  if  be- 
fore it  is  too  late,  our  rulers  become  wise,  de- 
termined, and  courageous  enough  to  lead  it. 
Otherwise,  after  the  lapse  of  a  certain  time, 
the  goddess  of  revolution  will  force  an  en- 
trance into  our  social  structure,  amid  all  the 
convulsions  of  violence,  with  wild,  streaming 
locks,  and  with  brazen  sandals  on  her  feet. 
In  the  one  way  or  the  other  she  will  come  ; 


Socialism.  113 

and  when,  forgetting  the  tumult  of  the  day, 
I  sink  myself  in  history,  I  am  able  to  hear 
from  afar  her  heavy  tread." 

Is  not  this  worshiping  the  false  god  while 
pretending  allegiance  to  the  true  ?  Choose 
ye  truly  !  Whom  will  ye  obey  ?  Justice 
blind  to  all  earthly  conditions  and  wielding 
the  sword  of  revolution,  or  Justice  with  the 
sceptre  of  truth  and  the  crown  of  peace  ? 
If  the  latter,  you  are  with  us  ;  if  the  former 
you  are  against  us.  There  is  no  evading  the 
issue,  because  Socialism  proclaims  a  doctrine 
of  despair.  Socialism  comes  wrapt  in  clouds 
of  darkness  and  waving  a  dark-lantern  with 
which  it  lights  up  only  the  moral  sores  and 
corrupt  wounds  of  humanity.  It  sees  noth- 
ing healthful,  nothing  encouraging,  nothing 
reassuring  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  Juda- 
ism is  \rreathed  in  a  halo  of  light,  and  sends 
out  warming  rays  of  hope  and  good  cheer 
and  trust  into  every  heart.  Thus  they  dis- 
place each  other  and  are  irreconcilable. 
Socialism  revives  the  legend  of  old  King 
Sisypus,  of  Corinth,  who,  because  of  his  sins 
in  this  world,  is  condemened  in  the  Land  of 
Shades  to  roll  a  huge  stone  to  the  top  of  a 
hill  and  place  it  there.  No  sooner  has  he 
succeeded  in  getting  it  to  the  top  when  de- 
spite his  every  effort,  it  rolls  back  again  into 
the  lowest  part  of  the  valley  beneath,  and  so 
he  must  needs  descend  and  begin  anew, 
hoping  against  hope,  trying  again  and  again 
but  in  vain  —  disappointment  his  eternal 
doom. 

The  wage  workers  of  the  world,  say 
the  Socialists,  are  under  the  curse  of  Sisy- 
phus, always  have  been,  always  will  be,  un- 
less the  social  order  be  reconstructed.  They 
are  doomed  by  the  "iron  law  of  wages  "  to 
roll  the  huge  stone  of  their  daily  tasks  to 
8 


114  The  Social  Question. 

the  hill-top  of  endeavor,  always  expectant 
to  plant  it  firmly  on  the  summit,  only  to  see 
it  roll  back  again  into  the  valley  of  disap- 
pointment and  disaster.  This  is  their  doom, 
and  there  is  no  hope.  Translated  into 
every  day  phrase,  this  means  that  the  wage- 
earner  is  ground  down  by  competition  to 
the  smallest  amount  of  pay  upon  which  it  is 
possible  to  subsist ;  that  he  is  in  a  new  bond- 
age, in  which  the  capitalist  stands  as  task- 
master, wielding  the  lash  of  power  and 
threatening  not  only  the  back  of  his  employe, 
but  his  very  existence  and  that  of  his 
family.  A  heart-rending  spectacle  if  it  were 
true.  God  be  praised  that  the  new  light  of 
knowledge  makes  clear  the  fact  that  this 
awful  theory  of  wages  is  a  sham — a  hollow 
semblance  of  reality  which  shrivels  up  at  the 
touch  of  the  finger  of  investigation. 

Statistics  collected  by  such  unimpeachable 
authorities  as  Prof.  Leone  Levi,  Social  Con- 
dition of  the  Working  Classes  ;  Prof.  Thorold 
Rogers,  Work  and  Wages;  Robert  Giffen, 
President  of  the  British  Statistical  Society, 
Progress  of  the  Working  Classes  in  the  last 
Half  Century ;  Edward  Atkinson,  Capital 
and  Labor  Allies  not  Enemies ;  Prof.  F.  A. 
Walker,  Chief  of  United  States  Bureau  of 
Statistics,  The  Wages  Question;  Prof.  R.  T. 
Ely,  in  Publications  of  Johns  Hopkins  Uni- 
versity Papers,  and  many  others,  prove  that 
the  condition  of  the  working  people  during  the 
period  of  industrial  progress  has  so  much  im- 
proved as  to  render  this  theory  utterly  unten- 
able, ridiculous,  and  absurd.  Yet  Karl  Marx 
built  up  his  whole  scheme  of  Socialism  on  that 
theory.  "  A  more  crushing  and  contemptuous 
rebuke  it  is  impossible  to  conceive,"  says 
W.  H.  Mallock  "  than  that  which  these  facts 
administer  to  one  who,  in  the  opinion  of  his 


Socialism.  115 

disciples,is  the  prof  oundest  social  philosopher 
of  his  or  any  century."  *  The  theory  of  de- 
spair has  no  basis,  in  fact,  and,  therefore,  we 
must  condemn  the  superstructure  of  Social- 
ism as  unsound. 

Furthermore,  Judaism  is  endeavoring  to 
make  us  happy  and  contented  in  this  life. 
She  preaches  happiness  and  content  as  doc- 
trines ;  aims  to  show  us  that  the  ills  under 
which  we  suffer  are  for  the  most  part  our 
own  making,  and  how  they  can  be  overcome 
by  the  cultivation  of  the  homely  virtues  of 
honesty  and  thrift,  by  sobriety  and  intelli- 
gence, and  by  faithfulness  to  our  tasks,  to 
our  families,  to  our  country  and  our  religion. 
But  Socialism,  on  the  contrary,  preaches 
discontent ;  and  is  at  great  pains  to  exag- 
gerate the  ills  that,  under  existing  conditions, 
we  are  heir  to.  At  every  turn  it  dins  into 
our  ears,  along  with  its  false  philosophy  of 
despair,  its  false  doctrine  of  discontent.  It 
declares  that  as  physical  labor  creates  wealth, 
therefore  to  the  laboring  man  all  wealth 
should  belong.  Karl  Marx  said :  "  In  six 
hours  the  laborer  can  earn  all  that  he  needs 
for  his  own  sustenance.  Every  hour  be- 
yond that  is  so  much  towards  the  enrich- 
ment of  the  master.  Look  at  these  homes 
of  luxury,  these  carriages,  these  machines, 
these  palaces  of  industry.  These  are  yours. 
These  are  the  products  of  your  unrequited 
toil,  these  are  the  things  of  which  you  have 
been  fleeced." 

What !  mere  physical  labor  the  creator 
of.  all  wealth — this  the  fundamental  doctrine 
of  Socialism !  Can  sane  men  profess  it  ? 
What  about  the  brain  that  conceives  and 
plans  and  directs  and  controls  the  physical 
labor?  what  about  the  inventions  that  make 

*  Mallocky  Property  and  Progress,  p.  2i7« 


116  The  Social  Question. 

it  a  thousand  times  more  serviceable  ?  what 
about  the  organization  and  oversight  that 
make  it  ten  thousand  times  more  effective  ? 
what  about  the  material  on  which  and  with 
which  it  toils — land  and  ore  and  timber — 
the  products  of  nature  ?  and  what  about  cap- 
ital— accumulated  money,  the  result  of  self- 
denial,  economy  and  foresight — money  which 
runs  all  risks  and  keeps  all  labor  in  activity  ? 
Do  these  contribute  nothing  to  the  creation 
of  new  wealth  ?  Any  tyro  can  see  that  in 
fact  they  contribute  most,  and  therefore 
justly  receive  the  greater  share  of  the  reward 
or  profit. 

Such  is  the  weakness  of  Socialism.  A 
theory  was  adopted  then  by  taking  hold  of 
its  threads  and  twisting  and  twining  them 
this  way  and  that,  men  like  Lasalle  and 
Marx  wove  a  fine  web. in  which  they  en- 
snared themselves  and  the  working  people. 
Adam  Smith  and  Ricardo  would  not  recog- 
nize their  own  teaching  could  they  return  to 
earth. 

Repeat  these  doctrines  of  despair  and  dis- 
content again  and  again,  with  all  the  flour- 
ishes of  oratory  and  all  the  exaggeration  of 
rhetoric :  keep  dinning  them  into  the  ears 
of  laborers  who  are  most  likely  through  their 
own  folly  and  vices  in  misfortune,  who  are 
ill-clad  and  ill-fed  ;  shout  to  them  :  "  Look 
at  these  homes  of  luxury,  these  carriages, 
these  palaces  of  industry — these  are  right- 
fully yours  !  "  Make  such  proclamation, 
publish  it  day  after  day,  and  in  the  face  of 
truth  and  sober  reason  men  will  come  to  be- 
lieve it.  Play  upon  their  emotions,  stir 
their  baser  passions,  rouse  the  lion  in  their 
breasts  to  madness,  and  do  you  still  think 
that  he  will  suffer  himself  to  be  led  tamely  ? 
Cry  Revolution!  and  will  you  hope  for 


Socialism.  117 

peaceable  methods?  Cast  firebrands  into 
the  arsenal,  and  what  shall  prevent  the  ex- 
plosion the  and  flames,  desolation  ?  The  pre- 
tensions of  peace  are  false.  We  can  not  fol- 
low whither  Socialism  would  lead. 

There  are  certain  truths  or  half-truths 
which,  mingled  with  a  great  quantity  of  well- 
disguised  error,  have  given  the  semblance 
of  rights  to  Socialism  as  a  remedy  against 
such  ills  as  afflict  the  industrial  system  of  to- 
day. "Separate  the  real  ills  from  the  fancied 
ones  and  I  am  convinced  that  you  can  find 
their  remedy  in  such  expedients  and  reforms 
as  are  possible  and  within  our  reach  under 
existing  forms  of  society.  But  as  for  Social- 
ism, its  promises  are  fair  but  false  ;  its  theo- 
ries unable  to  bear  the  pressure  of  facts. 

Above  all,  from  the  standpoint  of  Judaism, 
must  it  be  condemned ;  because  Socialism 
makes  a  broad  distinction  between  social 
science  and  moral  science,  it  clamors  for- 
ever and  forever  about  social  rights,  the 
rights  of  labor,  the  rights  of  capital,  asks, 
How  much  ?  and,  Will  it  pay  ?  but  never 
dreams  of  social  duties,  duties  of  capital, 
duties  of  labor  :  never  asks,  Is  it  right  ? 
Ought  it  to  be  ? 

Here,  after  all,  is  the  great  and  vulnerable 
error  in  the  system  ;  that  is  why  it  hesitates 
not  at  demanding  the  confiscation  of  prop- 
erty, tools,  and  machinery.  Thus  it  con- 
demns theft  and  in  the  same  breath  recom- 
ends  theft.  It  cries,  "  Down  with  the  cap- 
italist ;  let  the  laborer  rule."  Thus  it  con- 
demns one  form  of  class-despotism,  and  in 
the  same  breath  clamors  to  replace  it  with 
another  form  of  class  despotism. 

From  the  standpoint  of  Judaism,  from 
the  high  ground  of  Jewish  justice  and  Jewish 


118  The  Social  Question. 

morality,  the  Socialism  of  to-day,  worshiping 
as  it  does  at  the  shrine  of  pagan  justice  and 
immorality,  can  never  be  admitted  as  the 
true  solution  of  the  Social  Question. 


Constructive  Solutions — Resume.     119 


DISCOURSE  XIII. 

CONSTRUCTIVE  SOLUTIONS. — RESUME. 

WE  have  passed  in  review  the  various  so- 
lutions to  the  Social  Question  that  are  known 
under  the  name  of  Socialism,  Nihilism,  An- 
archy, and  their  attendant  train.  We  have 
learned  that  they  are  destructive  in  their 
method,  utterly  subversive  not  only  of  the 
social  but  moral  order.  Therefore  from  the 
standpoint  of  Judaism  they  must  be  con- 
demned. But,  there  have  also  been  honest 
constructive  efforts  to  undo  the  injustice  that 
exists  in  the  relations  of  men  in  society. 

From  the  very  earliest  times,  since  a  right- 
eous indignation  against  that  injustice  has 
swelled  the  breasts  of  men,  it  has  impelled 
them  to  devise  modes  of  betterment.  Beauti- 
ful are  the  dreams  of  a  social  Elysium  that 
have  been  dreamt.  Glorious  are  the  pictures 
which  fancy  has  painted.  What  might  be 
called  the  romantic  literature  of  the  social 
question,  fills  many  volumes  of  quaint  and 
interesting  lore.  Plato,  in  his  Republic  rep- 
resents Socrates  as  studying  the  ideal  man 
in  the  ideal  commonwealth.  Plutarch,  in 
his  Life  of  Lycurgus  paints  an  ideal  society, 
as  does  Cicero  also  in  his  De  Republlca. 
After  the  revival  of  learning,  and  the  dis- 
covery of  America,  when  the  minds  of  men 
were  stirred  and  their  imaginations  made  won- 
drously  luminous  by  the  sudden  enlargement 
of  their  conception  of  the  world.  Sir  Thomas 


120  The  Social  Question. 

More  wrote  his  famous  Utopia.  This  was 
followed  by  the  Neiv  Atlantis  by  Francis 
Bacon ;  The  City  of  the  Sun,  by  Thomas 
Campanella,  and  other  similar  works.  Al- 
though ther.e  writings  have  undoubtedly 
influenced  the  current  of  the  world's  thought 
on  social  matters,  they  have  but  lightly  af- 
fected the  course  of  social  reform  practical. 

There  have  been  divers  experiments  in 
real  life  to  establish  such  perfect  common- 
wealths. Such  were  the  societies  of  the  Jew- 
ish Essenes,  the  Buddhist  Mendicants  and 
the  Christian  Monks.  Since  all  these  had 
some  ascetic  or  religious  principle  to  foster, 
apart  from  mankind,  this  fact  removes  them 
entirely  from  any  consideration  as  a  solution 
for  the  social  evils  that  afflict  society  at 
large. 

But  in  France  during  the  revolutionary 
period,  when  the  spirit  of  equality  and  frater- 
nity were  everywhere  rife,  the  propositions 
of  social  reformers  took  shape  in  definite 
plans  and  methods  by  which  the  whole  of 
society  was  to  be  put  on  an  entirely  new 
basis.  Experiments  were  set  on  foot  follow- 
ing out  the  economic  theories  of  such  men  as 
St.  Simon,  Fourier,  Lamennais,  and  espe- 
cially of  Etienne  Cabet,  who,  besides  writing 
his  Voyage  to  Icaria  (a  Utopia  after  the  pat- 
tern of  Sir  Thomas  More's),  also  led  into 
America  a  colony  in  1848,  and  devoted  his 
life  to  making  real  his  social  reforms  in  that 
little  society  which  he  founded.  Since  then 
our  country  has  become  the  field  of  experi- 
ment for  a  great  many  such  comm unities. 
Many  of  them  are  at  present  still  existing 
and  prospering  peacefully,  such  as  the  Econo- 
mists, Zoarites,  Shakers,  and  Icarians.  They 
are  all  in  greater  or  less  degree  communistic 
in  character.  Their  methods  are  peaceful 


Constructive  Solutions — Resume.     121 

although  their  ultimate  aims  are  the  same  as 
those  of  the  revolutionary  Socialists,  that  is, 
the  right  of  individual  ownership  is  given 
up,  all  things  are  held  in  common,  one  is  as 
rich  as  the  other,  all  must  labor  alike  and 
all  are  provided  for  alike  by  the  society. 
Mr.  Charles  Nordhoff  has  visited  all  these 
communities  in  the  United  States  and  pre- 
pared an  elaborate  report  of  them.  Have 
they  solved  the  social  question  ?  Mr.  Nord- 
hoff thinks  not.  As  the  result  of  careful  and 
impartial  investigation  he  says :  "  The 
general  feeling  of  modern  society  is  blindly 
right  at  bottom;  Communism  is  a  mutiny 
against  society.  Only  whether  the  Com- 
munist shall  rebel  with  a  bludgeon  and'a 
petroleum  torch,  or  with  a  plough  and  a 
church,  depends  upon  whether  he  has  not  or 
has  faith  in  God — whether  he  is  a  religious 
being  or  not."  * 

Now  all  these  communistic  schemes  must 
from  the  standpoint  of  Judaism,  be  un- 
equivocally condemned.  Communism,  pluck- 
ing the  spurs  from  the  heels  of.  ambition, 
weakens  and  reduces  all  to  a  nerveless 
mediocrity  ;  while  Judaism,  guarding  strictly 
the  fences  of  equity,  urges  every  one  for- 
ward to  the  utmost  development  of  those 
capacities  with  which  God  has  endowed  him. 

Communism  opposes  the  private  owner- 
ship of  land,  which  in  the  Jewish  law  is 
held  sacred,  as  based  on  the  principle  of 
justice  and  reward  indelibly  stamped  in  our 
natures.  According  to  the  Jewish  law, 
every  man  was  made  a  land-owner,  and  was 
therefore  ever  on  the  side  of  law  and  order.* 

*Nordhoff,  Communistic  Societies  of  the  United  States. 
p.  208. 

tin  an  interesting  article  entitled  "Three  Ways  of 
Living,"  by  Mr.  John  Poison,  in  the  Paisley  Gazette, 
the  following  reference  was  made  to  the  Land  Legisla- 


122  The  Social  Question. 

Rabbi  Eliezer  even  declares  *  that "  no  man 
is  truly  a  free  man  until  he  owns  a  piece  of 
ground  which  yields  him  a  living."  To  this 
end  monopoly  was  checked  (and  we  in  our 
times  have  not  yet  devised  any  correspond- 
ing means  to  do  this)  through  that  strange 
unique  institution  of  Moses — the  Sabbatic 
and  Jubilee  years — adapted  to  the  peculiar 
circumstances  of  an  agricultural,  theocratic 
nation.  Communism  comes  into  deadly 
conflict  with  the  moral  law  of  Judaism  when 
tampering  with  the  sanctity  of  the  marital 
relations  and  destroying  the  home,  which  is 
the  sacred  shrine  of  all  morality  and  social 
order.  Therefore  unhesitatingly  must  Juda- 
ism pass  sentence  against  all  these  svstems. 

tion  of  the  Bible.  As  to  primogeniture,  it  has  high 
sanction  ;  so,  indeed,  has  entail.  By  the  Mosaic  law 
both  were  established.  The  600,000  adult  males,  who, 
it  is  estimated,  entered  Canaan,  hal  the  land  divided 
among  them  by  lot,  which  gave,  it  is  computed,  about 
sixteen  to  twenty-five  acres  to  each.  This  was  the 
patrimony  of  each  family,  and  it  was  by  the  institution 
of  primogeniture  and  the  jubilee  made  inalienable,  al- 
though it  is  not  certain  that  the  provisions  of  the  jubi- 
lee ordinance  were  ever  observed.  They  certainly  were 
not  up  to  the  time  of  the  Babylonian  captivity.  By  the 
law  of  primogeniture,  the  eldest  son,  or  if  there  were 
no  sons,  the  eldest  daughter,  and  if  dead,  the  eldest 
child  of  such  son  or  daughter,  received  a  double  portion 
of  the  inheritance,  the  remainder  being  equally  divided 
among  the  others.  And  so  rigid  was  the  enactment, 
that  even  in  the  case  of  a  man  with  two  wives — the  one 
beloved  and  the  other  hated — if  a  child  of  the  hated 
wife  was  the  first  born,  the  father  had  no  power  to  dis- 
possess him  of  his  double  portion.  By  the  Jubilee 
ordinance — which  did  not  apply  to  houses  in  towns — 
all  alienated  lands  reverted,  in  the  fiftieth  year  to  J,he 
legal  heir,  who  may  be  said  to  have  been  the  heir  of 
entail.  These  two  provisions  instead  of  nationalizing 
land,  as  some  people  say,  individualized  it;  and  the 
severest  denunciations  were  pronounced  against  those 
who  in  any  way  attempted  to  dispossess  a  man  of  the 
"  inheritance  of  his  fathers."  Dr.  I.  M.  Wise,  in  the 
American  Israelite. 

*  See  also  Discourse  V.,  Note,  on  same  topic. 

Jab.  63,  Tosef. 


Constructive  Solutions. — Resume.     123 

The  task  which  we  had  set  for  ourselves 
is  now  completed.  The  great  social  ques- 
tion that  is  agitating  the  world  from  center 
to  circumference  enlisted,  nay,  commanded 
our  most  ardent  interest.  Earnestly  we  en- 
tered upon  a  study  of  this  great  world-prob- 
lem ;  not  indeed  in  the  presumptuous  hope 
that  for  us  it  was  reserved  to  find  a  final 
solution  for  the  ever-recurring  riddle,  or  to 
set  forth  any  "sole  possible  method  "  of  re- 
moving once  and  forever  the  unjust  inequali- 
ties in  the  conditions  of  men  which  prevail, 
but  simply  in  the  earnest  search  after  knowl- 
edge, to  make  intelligible,  and  thus  if  pos- 
sible to  bring  to  the  Jewish  mind  and  heart 
a  profound  sense  of  the  importance  of  the 
questions  which  now  so  earnestly  absorb 
every  intelligent  and  right  feeling  man  and 
woman. 

It  has  been  said  both  in  private  discussion 
and  in  the  press  that  the  question  I  have 
undertaken  to  present  to  you  was  irrelevant 
here,  that  it  was  out  of  place  in  the  Jewish 
pulpit,  or,  for  that  matter,  in  any  pulpit.  I 
respect  the  opinion  of  those  who  so  think, 
but  I  also  exercise  my  high  right  to  pos- 
itively differ  from  them.  Indeed  so  firmly 
convinced  was  I  of  the  opposite  opinion 
that  when  I  was  told  that  no  Jewish  minis- 
ter had  ever  yet  spoken  out  authoritatively 
on  this  subject,  it  became  to  me  an  over- 
whelming duty  and  necessity  to  do  so. 
Therefore  with  conscientious,  painstaking 
effort  I  ranged  along  the  entire  course  of 
history  from  the  most  ancient  times  until 
to-day  in  order  to  point  out  the  significance, 
the  supreme  importance  of  this  social  ques- 
tion in  all  its  bearings,  from  its  inception 
on,  and  to  show  what  its  special  significance 
is  to  us  Israelites ;  to  tell  the  world  in  be- 


124  The  Sodal  Question 

half  of  the  Judaism  of  to-day  what  our  re- 
ligion has  had  to  offer  in  the  past,  what  it 
still  has  to  present  toward  the  solution  of 
the  problem  in  hand. 

Now  recall  briefly  what  in  these  studies 
we  have  discerned,  and  you  will  confess  that 
Judaism  has  given  to  the  world  the  largest 
and  best  contributions  to  this  Social  Ques- 
tion that  have  as  yet  been  offered.  The  per- 
nicious charge  so  sweepingly  made  by  the 
modern  social  agitator,  that  the  rich  are 
richer  and  less  numerous,  the  poor  are  poor 
and  more  numerous  than  ever  before,  was 
by  a  careful  contrast  with  the  records  of  the 
past  shown  to  be  absolutely  false.  We  saw 
how  throughout  the  ancient  world  the 
laborers  were  bound  in  the  shackles  of  slav- 
ery and  hounded  by  their  masters  unto  the 
very  death.  Judaism,  defying  Pharaoh  and 
the  whole  Egyptian  host,  first  burst  those 
fetters  and  made  the  laborer  free,  and  ever 
thereafter  through  all  the  long  and  weary 
centuries  of  her  sorrowful  existence  never 
failed  to  lift  up  her  voice  to  denounce  op- 
pression and  plead  for  the  oppressed.  And 
now,  at  least  in  our  blessed  land  of  freedom, 
the  laborer,  emancipated  and  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  such  material  advantages  as  our 
civilization  and  the  increased  productive 
powers  which  the  industrial  advance  of  re- 
cent days  have  brought,  is  lifted  high  above 
the  condition  of  the  laborer  in  the  past. 

All  that  is  not  exaggerated,  all  that  is  just 
in  the  complaint  of  the  modern  laborer  arises 
not  from  his  being  poorer  than  ever  before  in 
the  essentials  of  healthy,  happy  human  life, 
but  simply  of  the  stupidity,  willful  perverse- 
ness,  moral  obliquity  of  rich  and  poor  alike, 
as  seen,  e.  g.,  in  the  greed  of  one  and  the 
thriftlessness  of  the  other,  in  the  abuse  of 


Constructive  Solutions — Resume.    125 

power  by  the  master   and  the  lawless  spirit 
of  the  employe. 

Work  upon  character  until  these  moral 
differences  have  been  allayed,  and  all  that 
will  be  removed  which  forestalls  and  hind- 
ers the  realization  under  the  new  and  changed 
conditions  of  our  times  of  the  eternal  princi- 
ples of  justice  and'  right  which  Moses  in  his 
day  succeeded  so  well  in  actualizing  in  the 
statutes  that  controlled  the  life  of  his  people. 

We  saw  how  labor  itself  was  despis- 
ed, scorned  and  held  degrading.  Moses 
grandly  and  majestically  swept  away  the 
caste-system,  and  the  inhuman  degrada- 
tion of  man  by  his  fellow-men  stood 
forever  condemned.  Thus,  Judaism — again 
pioneer  and  champion  in  the  cause  of  right 
— was  the  first  to  make  work  instead  of  war 
the  legitimate  occupation  of  men.  The 
Rabbins  proclaim  the  dignity  of  labor,  not 
merely  in  words  by  precepts  and  laws,  but 
by  their  own  lives  and  through  their  own 
practical  example,  deeming  the  worldly  oc- 
cupation combined  with  the  spiritual  as  the 
only  secure  safeguard  against  sin. 

In  all  the  dismal  era  of  European  history 
known  as  the  Dark  Ages  the  followers  of 
Judaism  contributed  most  to  the  preserva- 
tion and  development  of  commerce  and  in- 
dustry and  upheld  correct  views  of  labor  de- 
spite the  world.  While  humbly  peddling 
their  oriental  wares  from  castle  to  castle 
along  the  bandit-ridden  highways  of  medi- 
aeval Europe,  they  retailed  likewise  those 
ideas  which,  conquering  at  last,  gave  the 
death  blow  to  the  serfdom  of  feudal  days, 
and  made  possible  the  rise  of  the  laborer  of 
modern  times  into  equal  and  free  conditions 
with  his  master. 

That  earnest  aspiration  after  a  better  state 


126  The  Social  Question. 

of  things  among  men  which  gives  to  the 
latest  Socialistic  movement  its  justification 
for  existence ;  this,  too,  has  been  fostered 
and  most  eloquently  and  profoundly  main- 
tained by  sons  of  Israel  in  Germany,  France, 
and  England.*  There  was  nothing  in  their 
religion  to  hinder  them  ;  nay,  the  codes  and 
precepts  given  to  the  world  by  Judaism  have 
been  and  still  remain  the  standard — the 
Court  of  Appeal  in  kindred  debates  and 
contentions. 

Thus  it  must  be  conceded  that  the  genuine 
triumphs  that  have  been  gained  in  behalf  of 
free  labor  and  the  freedom  of  the  laborer, 
these  are  in  their  last  resort  to  be  truely 
traced  to  the  influence  and  practical  work- 
ings of  Judaism,  whose  sphere,  unlike  that 
of  other  religions,  is  distinctively  of  this 
world — aspiring  unto  heaven,  but  ever  tread- 
ing firmly  the  earth,  striving  among  men, 
only  to  make  men  more  God-like. 

Is  it  for  us  to  conceal  these  things  and 
falsify  our  position?  I  aver  that  it  is  our 
solemn  duty  to  set  forth  these  achievements 
in  this  important  era  and  in  self-defence 
against  that  slur  and  imputation  which  by 
social  reformers  is  cast  upon  all  religion, 
show  forth  what  Judaism  has  wrought,  and 
bid  the  oppressed  hope,  for  their  cause  is  not 
forsaken.  Too  long,  have  we  Jews  been 
forced  to  live  behind  the  walls  and  barri- 
cades of  real  Ghettos.  Let  us  not  build  up 
around  us  an  intellectual  Ghetto,  and  hiding 
our  works  from  the  world  in  its  recesses, 
bring  opprobrium  where  none  is  due. 

Speaking  now  upon  the  present  phase  of 
the  Social  Question — speaking  in  the  name 
of  Judaism,  and  from  the  standpoint  of  its 

*  Ricardo,  Marx,  LaSalle,  Bamberger,  E.  Halvey,  E. 
Pereire,  and  others. 


Constructive  Solutions — Resume.     127 

unapproachable  ethical  code,  and  measuring 
all  conditions  by  the  standards  that  Moses, 
our  great  law-giver,  set  up,  and  which  in 
Judea  produced  what  was  undoubtedly  the 
most  successful  social  system  that  the  world 
has  ever  known,  we  are  compelled  not  only 
to  condemn  Communism,  Socialism,  Nihil- 
ism, Anarchy,  and  all  their  attendants,  but 
furthermore  to  earnestly  protest,  solemnly 
to  warn,  urgently  to  persuade,  and,  with  all 
the  zeal  that  truth  inspires,  to  contend 
against  their  further  encroachment. 

As  to  the  practical  solutions  now  clamor- 
ing for  attention,  they  are  all  in  a  formative 
process,  and  are  as  varied  and  numerous  as 
the  individual  minds  that  conceive  them. 
Arbitration  is  the  white  flag  of  truce  between 
the  hostile  organizations  of  capital  and  labor, 
which  are  everywhere  marshaling  to  the 
combat.  Profit-sharing  and  the  various 
forms  of  co-operation  are  the  articles  of  a 
permanent  league  of  peace,  in  which  the 
risks,  profits,  and  toils  are  equitably  divided 
between  employers  and  employes,  at  a  fair 
valuation  upon  what  each  contributes. 
Colonization  is  the  scheme  of  philanthrop- 
ists for  removing  the  denizens  of  overcrowd- 
ed cities  and  towns,  from  the  scenes  of 
starvation  and  misery  to  the  smiling  acres 
that  invite  their  toil,  with  the  promise  of 
plenty  and  happiness.  Taxation  upon 
land  arid  land  exclusively,  is  the  remedy  to 
which  Mr.  Henry  George  has  of  late  attracted 
such  extraordinary  attention. 

Whatever  may  ultimately  survive  of  any 
or  of  all  these  plans,  this  truth  remains 
paramount  and  is  all  that  now  really  con- 
cerns us  :  That  the  masses  should  be  edu- 
cated up  to  a  recognition  of  the  real  evils 


128  The  Social  Question. 

and  be  made  to  see  the  true  methods  by 
which  alone  any  reform  can  succeed. 

Now,  it  is  in  this  very  direction  that  Juda- 
ism with  her  peculiar  common-sense  practi- 
cality, and  wondrous  adaptability  has  a 
leading  task  still  to  perform  in  the  world ; 
her  crown  of  greatest  glory,  I  verily  believe, 
is  still  to  be  won  through  the  establishment 
of  social  justice  among  men.  Toward  this  she 
lias  pointed  the  ideal  with  her  golden  precept : 
"  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself." 
Her  moral  code  alone  can  furnish  the 
-guiding  methods  and  principles  of  any  per- 
manent social  reform,  whether  it  comes 
along  the  line  of  political  or  economic 
advancement,  for  the  social  question  is,  in 
the  main,  after  all  a  question  of  moral  con- 
duct. Supplant  whining  complaint  with 
manly  action,  drive  out  policy  with  the 
whip  of  honesty,  let  energy  vanquish  sloth, 
temperance  conquer  dissipation  and  intelli- 
gence rout  ignorance,  and  thousands  of 
those  abuses  which  give  reality  to  the  social 
question  will  be  rectified,  and  countless 
severities  will  be  allayed.  Let  greed  be 
checked  and  passions  be  controlled,  and  all 
bitterness  will  be  swallowed  up  in  sweet 
fraternity,  and  the  black  clouds  of  strife 
that  threaten  will  be  scattered  and  pass 
away. 

As  Judaism  has  redeemed  the  laborer  in 
the  past,  and  made  every  calling  honored, 
so  must  she  now  bend  her  efforts  to  establish 
the  truth  that  though  labor  may  be  a  com- 
modity whose  value  depends  on  the  fluctua- 
tions of  the  market,  yet  the  laborer  is  not 
such.  He  must  be  recognized  as  a  human 
being,  a  child  of  God ;  and  his  physical,  in- 
tellectual, moral,  and  spiritual  good  must  be 
the  first  consideration  in  all  the  contracts  of 


Constructive  Solutions — Resume.    129 

industry.  He  must  be  guarded  against  dan- 
ger, disease,  overwork,  and  all  oppression 
and  coercion,  mental  or  moral. 

In  dealing  with  the  great  curse  of  poverty 
the  world  has  missed  the  very  quintessence 
of  Moses'  teachings  :  "  Let  the  poor  glean 
in  the  fields  and  gather  through  bis  own  ef- 
forts what  he  needs ; "  that  is,  give  to  the 
poor,  not  support,  but  opportunity  to  secure 
his  own  support.  But  we  reverse  this 
teaching,  and  as  a  result — on  the  one  side 
noble  pride  silently  perishes  in  destitution 
rather  than  ask  for  aid,  and  on  the  other 
there  is  insolence,  tramping  the  country, 
and  demanding  or  stealing  an  unearned 
sustenance.  Mark  it!  these,  our  greatest 
social  evils,  were  unknown  in  Judea. 
Above  all  else,  we  need  to  preserve  and  per- 
petuate the  model  family-life  whicli  has  ever 
been  proverbial  of  the  Jewish  home,  and 
strive  to  make  the  nations  emulate  its  beauty 
and  its  worth. 

These  are  the  methods  of  social  reform 
which  we  Israelites  need  to  continually  con- 
vey to  the  world.  Oh,  let  us  not  be  blind 
to  the  great  opportunity  that  in  this  crisis 
of  history  is  before  us.  Never  has  Judaism 
been  so  free  to  lavish  its  treasures  on  man- 
kind. As  the  world  has  been  redeemed 
from  the  abyss  of  idolatry  and  corruption 
by  the  vital  force  of  Jewish  ideas,  so  can  it 
likewise  be  redeemed  from  Social  chaos. 
Let  not  the  atheists  turn  this  Social  Ques- 
tion into  a  weapon  against  religion.  If 
other  religions  turn  blindly  from  it,  let  us 
dare  to  cherish  it.  Our  duty  is,  not  to 
skulk,  like  Achilles  in  the  tent,  but  like 
doughty  David  of  old,  to  boldly  go  out  be- 
fore the  van.  In  all  living  vital  questions 
*  Lev.  xix.  10;  Deut.  xxiv.  21. 


130  The  Social  Question. 

that  concern  the  welfare  of  humanity,  we 
must  be  foremost  to  be  interested,  first  to 
study  them,  and  ever  ready  to  guide  and 
control  their  issue  into  the  course  of  the 
eternal  laws  of  God. 


FINIS. 


— 


AN 

DAY     AND  _ 

OVERDUE. 


-n-12,' 43  (8796s 


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